WORDS FROM THE WOOD

Updates from the writing desk of Leonard & Ann Marie Wilson

Lost in the Wood Press · Fantasy Fiction that Spotlights Cunning and Capable Women

August 2026 | The Behind the Scenes Issue

✦ Greetings from the Wood ✦

It’s still August on the calendar, but if you follow us anywhere online you may have noticed we’ve already got one boot in October. That tends to happen around here—it may be scorching hot outside, but the appearance of fall decorations in the stores makes us start thinking about pumpkins, porch lights, and things that go bump. This issue leans into it a little early, and we’re not sorry.

We've got a lot to catch you up on: an audiobook promise finally kept, two more Welcome Kits ready for sign-ups, a genuinely fun sponsorship announcement, and a peek behind the curtain at a project we still can't fully talk about yet. Settle in.

✦ From the Catalog ✦

First, the update we’ve been promising: Lethal Red Riding Hood is officially available on Audible. Combined with confirmed availability on Google Play, Apple Books, and libro.fm, we believe it should now be available wherever you get your listening in—so if you’ve been waiting on your preferred platform, this is your sign.

Second: the Book Club Welcome Kit family is growing. We’re still putting the finishing touches on production, but we’re ready to open sign-ups for Gingerdread and Ear Wyrm kits, alongside Lethal Red Riding Hood.

Book Club Welcome Kit sign-up page

And we're delighted to say we're no longer talking about the Welcome Kit in the hypothetical. Two book clubs have officially signed up—one right here in Conway, and one considerably further away in Washington state. We're anxiously awaiting word on how the experience lands for both of them, and we'll share what we hear.

✦ Out in the World ✦

Now that the cast has been announced, we can finally share this: Lost in the Wood Press is sponsoring Red Curtain Theatre’s teen production of The Addams Family Young@Part, to be staged this October.

A spooky show for a spooky month, brought to you by spooky publishers. We couldn’t have asked for a better fit if we’d written it ourselves.

More details on dates and tickets to come as we get closer—for now, just know that our favorite local teens are about to get delightfully macabre on stage, and we could not be prouder to help make it happen.

✦ Behind the Curtain (the Other Kind) ✦

We’re still not ready to talk Kickstarter details for Lorelei, but we can share a little of what’s been happening behind the scenes.

Filming wrapped with our Red Curtain Theatre teen crew, and the results were even better than we hoped. Here’s a peek from set:

Beta testing is also underway, and it’s been genuinely energizing to watch people outside our own heads use the tool. There’s still a few spots on the Beta Testing team if you meant to sign up but hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

We’ve also added an e-mail sign-up to the site for those who haven’t been bitten by the beta tester bug but still want to get updates on our road to release.

Lorelei Software Site

Curious what Lorelei looks like? Here’s a sneak peek.

✦ Around the Fire ✦

Recipe development for the Book Club Welcome Kits continues in Ann Marie’s kitchen, and it’s spawned an unexpected side project: short cooking tip videos and sneak previews of some of the tastier treats headed for future kits.

Keep an eye on our social media and YouTube channel in the coming weeks—learn how many types of flour she has in the cabinet, maybe learn something new, and hopefully something will make you hungry for a book you haven’t read yet.

Until next month, keep an eye on the tree line,

Leonard & Ann Marie Wilson

Lost in the Wood Press

Old fairy tales never die — they’re like vampires that way.

Lost in the Wood Press, LLC · 1111 Main St #243 · Conway, AR 72033

lostinthewoodpress.com · newsletter@lostinthewoodpress.com

© 2026 Lost in the Wood Press, LLC. All rights reserved.

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WORDS FROM THE WOOD

Updates from the writing desk of Leonard & Ann Marie Wilson

Lost in the Wood Press · Fantasy Fiction that Spotlights Cunning and Capable Women

July 2026 | Welcome Issue

✦ Greetings from the Wood ✦

Well, we didn’t scare you off. Last month’s relaunch issue landed in a lot of inboxes after a rather embarrassing four-year silence, and instead of a chorus of “who are these people again?” we got warm replies, a few new Discord requests, and at least one email that just said “about time.” Fair. More than fair, honestly.

So we’re back again, right on schedule, and this month we’ve actually got something we’ve been sitting on for a while: the Book Club Welcome Kit is finally ready for its close-up. We also owe you an audiobook update, a look at the new website, and—because apparently we can’t help ourselves—a small announcement about a project that has absolutely nothing to do with fiction and everything to do with the software Leonard and I use to keep our fictional worlds from falling apart.

Grab your tea (or your ill-advised midnight coffee, we don’t judge), and let’s get into it.

✦ From the Catalog ✦

Lethal Red Riding Hood is getting around. Last month we told you the audiobook had landed on Google Play—since then it’s also gone up on Apple Books and through libro.fm, so however you like to listen, there’s likely a door open for you now.

We’ve also submitted it to Audible and are currently in the delightful limbo of their review process. No timeline to share yet, but we’ll announce it here the moment it clears. In the meantime, if you’ve listened on any of the current platforms, a rating or review helps more than you’d think—narrated fiction lives and dies by word of mouth just as much as the printed kind.

✦ Out in the World ✦

You may have noticed something has stirred in the wood—namely, lostinthewoodpress.com. The site's had a full redesign: easier to find your way around, easier to find the books, and (we hope) it finally looks as folkloric and slightly haunted as the brand has always sounded in our heads.

Poke around when you get a chance. If you spot anything broken, a dead link, or a page that looks like it wandered off the path entirely, we'd genuinely love to hear about it.

✦ The Book Club Welcome Kit Has Arrived ✦

This is the one we've been teasing for two issues now, so let's not bury the lede: sign-ups for the Book Club Welcome Kit are open as of today.

lostinthewoodpress.com/book-club-kit.php

The kit for Lethal Red Riding Hood is complete and ready to go out the door; kits for the rest of the catalog are in active production and will roll out over the coming months. Each kit is a mix of electronic and physical goodies, and while not every item appears in every kit, here’s the general shape of what a club might receive:

Electronic:

• A book club recipe guide themed to the world of the book

• A curated Spotify playlist

• Discussion questions

• In-world extras (letters, broadsheets, songs—the kind of thing that only makes sense once you’ve finished the book)

• Digital wallpaper

• Icons for your meeting announcements or event page

Physical:

• Bookmarks, book plates, magnets, and stickers

• In-world extras and annotation tabs

• A single Lost in the Wood Press branded cinch bag, for the club organizer or can be used as a door prize

A confession from Ann Marie on that recipe guide: not once, while writing any of these books, did it occur to me that I’d eventually need to stand in my own kitchen testing whether a fictional dish actually works as a real one. And yet here we are—notebook in one hand, a spoon in the other, taste-testing my way through club menus that didn’t exist three months ago. It’s been a genuinely delightful kind of homework.

Physical kits ship free to clubs with a US mailing address. If your club is outside the US, don’t let that stop you from signing up—we’re happy to work out mailing arrangements with international clubs on a case-by-case basis.

And if your club would like an author visit to go with the discussion, we do those too—in person if you’re within range of Conway, Arkansas, or virtually if you’re not. Just note it on the sign-up form and we’ll follow up to find a time that works.

✦ Around the Fire ✦

We're branching out—a bit further than usual, in fact.

Both of us work in software development in our day jobs, and for a long time we’ve been frustrated that nothing quite fit the way we wanted to track and build our fictional worlds—not as authors drafting a series, and not as tabletop gamemasters trying to keep a campaign’s history straight. Leonard’s also spent a fair amount of time lately experimenting with AI-driven solo role-playing tools, with results that ranged from promising to mildly chaotic.

So a while back, we started building a worldbuilding and world-management tool for our own use. A few months ago, we looked at what we’d made and realized it might be worth sharing beyond our own desk.

That project is Lorelei—software developed by world-builders, for world-builders. It’s being built with three kinds of people in mind: authors, tabletop gamemasters, and solo role-players.

We’re planning to launch a Kickstarter for Lorelei next month, and next issue we’ll go into far more detail about what it actually does. For now, we’re opening up applications for beta testers—if you’d like an early, unpolished look at the tool (and don’t mind the occasional rough edge in exchange for helping shape it), you can apply at www.loreleisoftware.com

More on this soon.

✦ Around the Fire ✦

We’re working with some of the talented teens from Red Curtain Theatre to put together promotional videos for the Lorelei Kickstarter and for social media.

We held auditions last Saturday, and we’re looking forward to a full day of rehearsals followed by filming next weekend. Apparently building a piece of software also means becoming a scriptwriter, and Ann Marie is discovering a new career as a short-form video producer. Neither of us saw that particular job title coming.

A big thank-you to Red Curtain Theatre for letting us use their facilities to make this happen. More footage to come once it’s ready—we’ll share it here first.

Until next month — happy reading, and don't forget to wander from the path,

Leonard & Ann Marie Wilson

Lost in the Wood Press

Old fairy tales never die — they’re like vampires that way.

Lost in the Wood Press, LLC · 1111 Main St #243 · Conway, AR 72033

lostinthewoodpress.com · newsletter@lostinthewoodpress.com

© 2026 Lost in the Wood Press, LLC. All rights reserved.

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WORDS FROM THE WOOD

Updates from the writing desk of Leonard & Ann Marie Wilson

Lost in the Wood Press · Fantasy Fiction that Spotlights Cunning and Capable Women

June 2026 | Relaunch Issue

✦ Greetings from the Wood ✦

Well. Hello again.

We know, we know — it’s been a while. Four years is a long time to go quiet in the wood. We’d like to tell you we were deep in an enchanted sleep, or that some meddlesome witch put a curse on our inbox, but the honest answer is simply that life got very full, very fast, in mostly wonderful ways. And now, like any good fairy tale monster, we’re back.

Pull up a log by the fire. There is a lot to catch you up on.

✦ From the Catalog ✦

The biggest news from the past four years is that the Dark Goddess Chronicles have gone audio — and the response has been everything we hoped for.

We started in April 2025 with the audiobook release of Conspiracy of One, a short story set in the Dark Goddess Chronicles world. Readers took to it immediately, which gave us the confidence to move forward with what we’d been dreaming about for a while.

Which brings us to the announcement we’re most excited to share:

The audiobook of Lethal Red Riding Hood is now available on Google Play.

Book One of the Dark Goddess Chronicles — the fairy-tale horror that started it all — is now available to listen to wherever you like to walk, drive, or hide under the covers at night. You can find it here: Lethal Red Riding Hood (Google Play). Wider availability is coming soon.

If you’ve been meaning to introduce a friend to the series and they’re more of a listener than a reader, now is a perfect time.

✦ Meanwhile, in a Portal Far, Far Away... ✦

While we were away, the Freyjur Fantasies didn’t sit still either. In December 2022, we published Interstellar Goth Princess Blues — Book Two in the series, and the one so many of you asked about after we teased Lenore’s story in our last newsletter.

If you’ve been waiting to find out what happens when everyone’s favorite Goth Princess in pink sets off to explore strange new worlds with her friends, your wait is long over. Interstellar Goth Princess Blues is available now in e-book and paperback.

✦ Out in the World ✦

One of the things that kept us busy — and genuinely fed our souls during the hiatus — was getting out into the wider world of fantasy literature. We’ve attended World Fantasy Convention four times in the past four years, participating as panelists, reading excerpts of our work, and connecting with fellow authors, publishers, and readers from across the genre.

The highlight of those appearances came at the 2024 convention in Niagara Falls, where Ann Marie moderated the Monstrous Mothers panel — a deep dive into horror stories centering on mothers and motherhood. It was exactly the kind of conversation our books love to live inside.

The most recent convention was held in Brighton, England — and we decided that if we were crossing the Atlantic anyway, we were going to make the most of it.

We started in Cardiff, Wales, made our way along the coast of the English Channel, and ended in Edinburgh, Scotland. We rode trains through countryside that looked like it was built for a fantasy novel. We touched the white cliffs of Dover. We hiked. We visited more castles. We came home with notebooks full of ideas and hearts full of the kind of wonder that reminds you why you write what you write.

Expect echoes of Great Britain to start showing up in future books. We can’t help it.

✦ Closer to Home ✦

We’ve also been showing up locally, and it has been genuinely wonderful.

Earlier this year we had vendor tables at two events here in Conway, Arkansas: Author Fest 3 and the Women’s Leadership Network Entrepreneur Showcase. Both were successful in the ways that matter most — sales, conversations with readers, and connections with other creative people doing interesting work.

Author Fest 3 in particular sparked a conversation that has us very excited — but we’re not quite ready to share full details yet. What we will say is this: if you’re part of a book club, or know someone who is, keep an eye on your inbox. The next issue of Words from the Wood will have something specifically for you.

✦ Supporting the Next Generation of Storytellers ✦

Last year we had the pleasure of sponsoring Red Curtain Theatre‘s teen production of Beetlejuice Jr. — and it was one of the highlights of our year.

The show was a natural fit for us on every level. The spooky aesthetic? Obviously. But more than that, it was a production with a young women stepping into a bold, complex, and capable role — which is exactly the kind of story Lost in the Wood Press exists to champion, no matter the medium and no matter the age of the storyteller.

We had such a wonderful time working with Red Curtain that we’re doing it again. This fall, we’ll be sponsoring another teen production —keep an eye on your inbox for details in a future newsletter.

If you’re local to the Conway area and want to support the arts (and a theater company doing genuinely great work with young performers), Red Curtain Theatre is worth following: redcurtaintheatre.com

✦ Around the Fire ✦

A few housekeeping notes as we restart:

• Words from the Wood is now published on Substack, where new readers can find and follow us directly. If you know someone who’d enjoy our books, you can send them to our Substack page and they can subscribe there.

• Existing subscribers continue to receive the newsletter by email through Kit (you may know it as ConvertKit). Nothing changes on your end — it just arrives in your inbox as it always did.

• Going forward, we’re aiming for monthly issues. We’re not going to promise we’ll never miss one — we’ve learned our lesson about promises we can’t keep — but monthly is the plan.

We’re genuinely glad to be back. Thank you for still being here.

Until next month — happy reading, and may all your terrors be fictional.

Leonard & Ann Marie Wilson

Lost in the Wood Press

Old fairy tales never die — they’re like vampires that way.

Lost in the Wood Press, LLC · 1111 Main St #243 · Conway, AR 72033

lostinthewoodpress.com · newsletter@lostinthewoodpress.com

© 2026 Lost in the Wood Press, LLC. All rights reserved.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Cover Reveal: Interstellar Goth Princess Blues

As a modern coven of urban witches, the Freyjur step into works of fiction for fun and profit. Arguably the most fun part is la química, a heady sexual chemistry that suffuses every world they step into regardless of the original fiction.

But Lenore isn’t a bit comfortable with the hedonistic flings that come with the territory. She dreads the emotional investment of getting caught up in a whirlwind romance that’s all too quickly over.

So when the coven ventures into the sprawling, space-opera universe of Space Jockey Zero, it’s all a business trip for Lenore. She’s there to cure cancer, nothing else.

Then a case of mistaken identity leaves her stranded and alone.

To linger in the alien reality can bring only madness—but before Lenore can hope to get home she’ll have to stop an interstellar war, teach the greatest threat to galactic civilization how to be evil, and find some way to deal with a whirlwind romance that’s going terribly right.

At least there’s cocoa.

Lynn Ericson's Interstellar Goth Princess Blues, the sequel to Learning to Spell, launches on Amazon on December 1st, with pre-orders available soon

The Open-Secret Paperback Sale

As a special treat for those of you following us, we've marked down the paperback versions of both Lethal Red Riding Hood and Learning to Spell to the absolute minimum Amazon will let us sell them for.

We're not advertising this to anyone who's not already following us online. Either you're in the know or you're not.

For the duration, the paperback version of Lethal Red Riding Hood costs $9.68 (down from $17.99) on Amazon, and Learning to Spell costs just $5.34 (down from $8.99).

We'll probably keep the prices that way for a few weeks, but no promises. Grab them while you can.
 

Meet our Writer Friends: Michael W. Gajewski

A fellow member of the our writing group, Michael has published his debut novel, The Shotgun House, a supernatural thriller set in central Arkansas.

A lifetime resident of the Ozark foothills in central Arkansas, Michael W. Gajeski developed a fascination in his early years for the area's past and the mysteries and folktales that are so often intertwined with such things. When he isn't writing, he enjoys spending time with his wife and four children, reading scary stories, and exploring the national forests around his home.

"This novel was great from beginning to end. It really sucks you in right away, which is important to me. The story itself was creative and original. I can't wait for this author to send us something else!"

Happy reading,
Leonard and Ann Marie

New Orleans Calls

We only visited the Big Easy once before, but we've been looking for excuses to go back ever since, and they couldn't have handed us a nicer one than to host World Fantasy con there while we were celebrating the second anniversary of our first release, Lethal Red Riding Hood.

So come the beginning of November, we're ducking out of the day jobs and heading downriver to celebrate in style with our fellow fantasy afficionados. Plus it counts as research for our next Dark Goddess book, where we'll be delving into the legend of the pirate queen, Blackwater Molly. Where in the U.S. could you find better inspiration for a good, Gothic ghost story about dark, dangerous waters and the things that lurk beneath?

https://www.wfc2022.org

Cover Wars

We've always been proud of the covers Peter does for us, and we've entered his work in Author Shout "Cover Wars" for the week that starts September 4th. If you'd care to join us in recognizing his talent and in raising the profile of our work as a whole in the bargain, stop by and vote for Lethal Red Riding Hood as often as once a day!

https://authorshout.com/cover-wars/

The Fellowship of Conway Literati Presents…

A few years ago when we were still struggling with the concept of finishing all those novels we'd start writing, we stumbled on a local attempt to tackle just that problem, promoting National Novel Writing Month through the local library. And that was the year everything finally clicked for us.

Ann actually won "NaNoWriMo", finishing her first 50,000 word novel that November. We haven't gotten around to publishing that one yet, but it's on the short list once she finds time to go back over the quickly dashed out manuscript, fleshing it out and polishing it up.

With the same burst of motivation, we finished our debut novel, Lethal Red Riding Hood, the following month. From there, the words just kept flowing and the stories kept coming.

Also coming out of that NaNoWriMo, the friend group we'd made that autumn immediately decided to coalesce into a more permanent writer's support group, dubbing itself the Fellowship of Conway Literati.

After Ann and I launched Lost in the Wood Press to stop just talking about getting our work in front of the public and actually do it, the FCL began kicking around the idea of putting together a charity anthology to spur others in the group to do the same, and it's finally starting to get real. We've got a solid book's worth of first drafts and we're deep in editing the collection of fantasy short stories about women not to be trifled with. Watch this space for updates.
 

Meet our Writer Friends: CJ May

A fellow member of the FCL, CJ May is an artist as well as an author of YA fantasy novels.

C.J. May lives in Arkansas with her cat. Her first book, Lucid Nightmare, draws on her history of frequent lucid dreams. She is working on a fantasy series featuring unicorn and dragon main characters.
"A real page turner. You really want to know what happens next."

Happy reading,
Leonard and Ann Marie

Meet Booth Bear

It's been great finally getting out to meet the reading public in person at SoonerCon last month! We met so many interesting people, including other authors and artists.

Our booth bear outdid himself, bringing in a steady stream of both general interest and paying customers.

We nearly ran out of copies of Lethal Red Riding Hood for him to sell, and he moved lots of copies of the other books, too. The Ear Wyrm cover and elevator pitch proved particular favorites.

SoonerCon also proved our lighthearted Freyjur Fantasies can find a readership of their own, even as we focus on building our brand around the Gothic horror of the Dark Goddess Chronicles.

We even bumped into a fan of Leonard's first professional sale as an author: "The Ghost of Mistmoor," a haunted house adventure for Dungeons & Dragons published in Dungeon Magazine back in the nineties.

All in all a great weekend!

Adding a New Page to Our Spellbook
The sequel to the portal-fantasy romance Learning to Spell is on its way now to Elise, our copy editor.

This one delves into the trials, tribulations, and love-life of second-generation Goth-girl, Lenore, as she tries to navigate both her mixed feelings about her family legacy and a galaxy-spanning space opera where the laws of physics are more sort of guidelines.

Can Lenore stop self-sabotaging long enough to enjoy the fantasy that's been dropped in her lap?

Will impostor syndrome prove to be her undoing or her salvation?

And why is the biggest threat to galactic civilization turning to her for pointers on how to be evil?

If you want to find out before everyone else, drop us a line. We're ready to start assembling an advance reader team for Interstellar Goth Princess Blues!

Social Self-Defense is a Critical Survival Skill

If you've read Lethal Red Riding Hood yet, you know we love the "con-artist with a heart of gold" archetype. The chance to see Hugh Jackman strutting the stage as Professor Harold Hill is what motivated us to stop thinking about maybe taking in a Broadway show someday and finally just get up and do it.

Trickster characters can be insanely fun and fascinating. The problem is, few real life tricksters actually have hearts of gold. People who lie, cheat, and swindle on a regular basis aren't generally known for their empathy. The "con" in "con artist" is short for "confidence," because rather than abusing you by more direct methods, they worm their way into your confidence specifically to betray it. They're predators.

We've survived our share. It's very doable. They just count on people not knowing how, so the first step to surviving them is talking about them. In case anyone wants to benefit from our experience, we've started talking about it in our blog.
Social Self-Defense is a Critical Survival Skill | Lost in The Wood -- Leonard and Ann Marie Wilson

Meet our Writer Friends: Jon Cronshaw
Jon Cronshaw is a full-time fantasy and speculative fiction author based in Morecambe, England.

Born in Wolverhampton, he has a PhD in the history of art and has written for local and national newspapers across the UK.

He’s an avid reader, podcaster, and history geek.

Visit: https://joncronshaw.com to learn more.

THE RAVENGLASS CHRONICLES

Kat is heir to a brutal empire...

...but the last thing she wants to do is rule.

When the day she’s been dreading finally arrives, she is torn between her royal duties and a desire to follow her magical destiny.

Will Kat choose true love and risk certain war, or accept an arranged marriage with a man three-times her age?

With only a wyvern and a messenger boy as her friends, Kat is forced to embark on a magical adventure to seek out the mysterious Guardians and unlock the secret of her powers...and her family’s hidden past.

What do her mysterious dreams mean?

Who killed her father?

How deep do the secrets run and who is pulling the strings?   

Inspired by the tarot and set in a rich medieval world, this omnibus collection brings together all twenty-two novellas of Jon Cronshaw’s best-selling series, The Ravenglass Chronicles.

A coming-of-age epic fantasy adventure for everyone who loves hidden magic, found families, and reluctant heroes.


Until next time, happy wandering,
Leonard and Ann Marie

Rejoining the World Edition

Photo by Lia Alavidze on Scopio
While the pandemic continues to quietly plague the world (pun absolutely intended), our ability to remain in total lockdown no longer exists. So, fully vaccinated, well masked, and just generally trying to avoid becoming a danger to ourselves and others, we’re finally out there again, ready to meet our readers and just generally enjoy all the other things we’ve been missing.
 

Next Stop, Sooner Con

The first stop on our wild-and-crazy tour was the local library, where our reading and Q&A just happened to get scheduled on the last day of public school. Oops. Not a big crowd, but a fun one. Turned out to be a great way to warm up.

Come Friday, June 24th, we’re going to be in Oklahoma City for Sooner Con. We’ll have a vendor booth, so if you’re there too, come say hi!
 

Achievement Unlocked: From Sea to Shining Sea

Photos by Ann Marie Wilson (Top: Pacific Ocean, Channel Islands National Park; Bottom: Atlantic Ocean, Highlands, New Jersey)

After two years of hardly leaving the house, even a couple of raging introverts can find themselves ready for adventure—so before we got back into promoting our books, we crossed the nation twice in a two-stage driving tour. Christmas morning found us wading in the surf on a Pacific beach, and we spent our anniversary dinner with the Atlantic just over the railing beside us.

We walked among the redwoods. We took in Hugh Jackman playing Harold Hill on Broadway. We raced a blizzard across Oklahoma. We drove the old Baltimore-Washington highway through the forest in the dead of night with rain coming down. We took time out from poring through historical atlases in the Reading Room of the Library of Congress to steal a kiss in the stacks.

Lots and lots of making up for lost time.
 

Meet our Writer Friends: Aaron Hodges

One of the great things about our indie author journey has been meeting other authors.

Originally from Whakatane, New Zealand, Aaron Hodges published his first novel in 2015 and now has over a dozen works to his name.  His latest, Help! My Wizard Mentor had a Heart Attack and Now I'm Being Chased by a Horde of Giant Spiders is out now and available on Amazon: Amazon.com: Help! My Wizard Mentor Had a Heart Attack and Now I'm Being Chased by a Horde of Giant Spiders!: A Humorous LITRPG Fantasy eBook : Hodges, Aaron: Kindle Store

Until next time, happy wandering,
Leonard and Ann Marie

Greetings from the wood:

To celebrate the beginning of Spring we're offering an exclusive giveaway for subscribers to our newsletter.

We're holding a drawing for two free, autographed paperbacks of the winner's choice from our catalog:

• Lethal Red Riding Hood (Dark Goddess Chronicles, book 1)

• Gingerdread (Dark Goddess Chronicles, book 2)

• Ear Wyrm (Dark Goddess Chronicles, book 3)

• Learning to Spell (Freyjur Fantasies, book 1)

Just send us an e-mail at contest@lostinthewoodpress.com naming the two books you'd want if you won, and you're entered to win! Winner will be selected April 15th.

Photo by Lia Alavidze on Scopio

More On the Way

In other news, the next Freyjur Fantasy is well underway, focusing on the love life of Lenore--everyone's favorite Goth Princess in pink--as she and her friends set off to explore strange new worlds.

The release remains months away, but now's the time to speak up if you want to be considered for our advance reading team.

Now that we've shown ourselves and the world we're serious about this, with several high-quality books under our collective belt, we intend to get serious in working with reviewers too. That means the review copies are going to go out months in advance from now on, as they properly should.

So if you're up for a little light-hearted happily-for-now, and think getting your portal-fantasy fix months ahead of everyone else in exchange for an honest review sounds look a good deal, drop us a line arcteam@lostinthewoodpress.com and say so.

And once that's one's off to the editor, we'll return to more of our signature epic-fantasy horror, packed as always with proactive women. We've got an unsettling visit to Camelot on the itinerary, then Keely and company will return to set sail on the pirate-infested waters of the Dark Goddess Chronicles.

Photo by S. Hermann & F. Richter on Pixabay

Do You Discord?

Want to talk fantasy horror (or most any other type of speculative fiction) with us? We're game. Leonard's set up a little semi-private Discord chat server just to do an end run around the pandemic and the too-often conversation-confounding algorithms of Facebook.

It remains invitation only--but as a subscriber to our newsletter, you're invited to invite us to invite you. Drop us a line newsletter@lostinthewoodpress.com with your Discord ID.

Fairy Tales & Fantasy in Kindle Unlimited Promotion
We are participating in a fairy tale themed promotion at on Book Funnel this month. Check it out and spread the word.

Until next time, happy reading and don't forget to wander from the path,

Leonard and Ann Marie

Ring in the New Year with More of Our Signature Fantasy Horror! We're excited to announce that Ear Wyrm, book three of the Dark Goddess Chronicles, is now available for pre-orders on Amazon, and the official launch has been scheduled for Thursday, January 30th.

Meilani always wanted to be a monster hunter for the Inquisition. She was good at it, too, until the first time she came face-to-face with real monsters. Now she’s alone with her nightmares on the road she paved with all those good intentions.

Then one tiny glimmer of redemption finally offers itself—a chance to safeguard a little girl with a very familiar ambition—only to lead her further down the rabbit hole. The journey leaves them stranded in a tangled web of time with a deadly rogue’s gallery of psychopaths and other monsters.

Hanging over it all, a once comfortingly familiar song exhorts them relentlessly, inescapably to push ever deeper into a night that never ends, even as something at the center of the web stirs restlessly on its gleaming hoard of possibilities. Here, now, and always, there be dragons.

If you're not fully caught up with the series, we encourage you to do so. Each book is meant to stand as a satisfying story in its own right, but from here on out we'll be hitting spoilers for previous books as we begin to weave the threads into a larger tapestry.

Some Holiday Cheer for Our Dungeoneering Friends

Let's face it: the Wilson household is a family of gaming geeks. We both cut our teeth as storytellers by sitting around leading our friends on collaborative quests to find the magic MacGuffin--and at the intersection where dungeon crawls and musical solstice festivity meet lives a family filk favorite Leonard composed in his college years:

(Image by Giacomo)

Here We Go Adventuring
(To the tune of "Here We Come a Wassailing")

Here we go adventuring
Among the halls so dank;
Here we go adventuring
Just here our armor clank.

Chorus:
Gems and gold come to you,
And some magic items too;
We just love dungeon bashing
It brings us good cheer
We'll go hacking and slashing my dear.

The cleric brought his plus-two mace,
The fighter brought her axe,
And wizard has his fireballs
In case of orc attacks.

(Chorus)

We fought the slavers and the drow,
We've been to Mordor gate;
We stole the crown from Pharoah's tomb
He really got irate.

(Chorus)

We kill the monsters take the gold
And march back up the stairs.
It's mindless and it's meaningless
But then who really cares?

(Chorus, then repeat Chorus for a big finish.)

Image by Pablo Nidam on Scopio

Year-End Reflections and a Heartfelt Thank You

As the first full year of our self-publishing adventure draws to a close, we'd like to thank you as a reader for all you do. We mean it. Reading fiction is one of the best things you can do for the world.

Pop-culture likes to deliver an undeserved image of habitual readers as being detached from- and unconcerned with-the world at large.

Fiction can certainly offer a refuge from relentless and overwhelming reality, but research has shown that retreating into fiction actually fosters empathy rather than stifling it.

As we write this, there's a culture war raging across the globe that basically breaks down to empathy vs. a lack of empathy. All around us there are people desperate to hold onto their own power no matter what it costs anyone else, even if holding onto that power destroys the world they live in in the process.

All of that behavior comes back to a lack of empathy. A lack of empathy is unsustainable. Empathy is what makes society possible, and it's society that allows us to pull ourselves out of the mire of daily survival and aspire to everything from simple daily pleasures to grand global achievements.

Never apologize for burying your nose in that book. By the time you close it and put it carefully back on the shelf, you're probably going to be a little bit warmer, a little bitter wiser, and a little bit nicer to be around.

Merry Christmas, happy solstice, and a joyous holiday season to you whatever you may celebrate. Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with reading.

Leonard & Ann Marie

Hi, << Test First Name >>

Online Author Reading
We're still nailing down the details, but Ann will be make a return appearance to FAE Productions (https://www.youtube.com/FaeProductions) for to do a reading from Gingerdread - and maybe a sneak peak from Ear Wyrm - for their Black Friday special.

Join her and the line-up of other authors and vendors to for some fantasy fun and to kick off the holiday deals.

Want to Read Ear Wyrm Before It's Released?

While we wait on the cover and the copy editing it's time to assemble our advance reading team for our upcoming addition to the Dark Goddess Chronicles.

If you're not familiar with the tradition of advance readers, it's accepting a copy of a book ahead of release in exchange for honest reviews in time for the book launch.

We're still looking to build up a team of reliable advance readers with an interest in fantasy horror. 

Reviews don't even need to be involved or eloquent. A sentence or two on your experience with a book can make a big difference to the algorithms that make the book visible, especially for a new release.

So if reading e-bools ahead of time and practically for free sounds like a good deal to you, give us a shout at LostInTheWooodPress@gmail.com. Mention ARC Team in the subject line.

A Solstice Carol Encore

'Tis the season to revisit a traditional solstice carol from the world of Dark Goddess Chronicles. We published this in an earlier newsletter, but that particular e-mail seems to have been garbled on the way across the Internet, so allow us to try again.

And if you DID already get to see it, well, that makes sense too. You'll understand when you read Ear Wyrm.

At the drawing of the year
Let us all gather near
As the fire brings good cheer
Sing laetatio

Mother’s breath blows frigid warning
That the heat you should be hoarding
As you pray for a new morning
Sing laetatio

Have you prayed for renewal
Have you gathered winter’s fuel
For the season can be cruel
Sing laetatio

For now the world is ending
And your clothes you should be rending
As you fall with sun descending
Sing laetatio

The world is dark and worn
Your hopes are all forlorn
Will you live to see the morn
Sing laetatio

Oh, Mother hear our singing
To your goodness we are clinging
For the new year you are bringing
Sing laetatio

When will the night be done
With the returning of the sun
A new year to have begun
Sing laetatio
 
With the coming of the light
And the fleeing of the night
We shall gather up our might
Sing laetatio

Arise again, begin anew
As the new year we pursue
Join together, make it through
Sing laetatio

Until next month, try to keep warm,

Ann Marie & Leonard
Lost in the Wood Press

Hi, << Test First Name >>

Anniversary Sale!

October 28th marks the one-year anniversary of the release of our first book, Lethal Red Riding Hood.

To celebrate we'll be offering the 160,000-word e-book through Amazon's countdown deals for just $4.99 during the last week of October: Monday the 25th through Sunday the 31st.

Critical Praise

"It is always interesting seeing fairytales told in new and ingenious ways…recommended for those who like classic fairy tales with a modern epic fantasy twist." — FanFiAddict

So Lethal Red Riding Hood finally got cut in the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off, but with feedback like "a very polished story" and "a favorite" among those that didn't make it to the finals, the reception was hardly discouraging.

We choose to see the outcome as a slight mismatch between the story and the personal preferences of the judges. Not everyone loves even the most beloved classics, so once you pass a certain threshold it's as much about getting the story in front of the right audience as it is about crafting the story itself.

Here's to the right audience!

Dark Goddess Chronicles Book 3 Is in Editing

In the end, Ear Wyrm turned out to be a quarter again as long as we'd anticipated, so we only wrapped up the manuscript on Friday. Now we're doing our final review before sending it off to Elise for copy editing.

If you've read books one and two, you'll start to see some of our long-term plans come into focus on this one as we weave together the disparate elements from before into a larger narrative with recurring characters.

We're huge fans of ensemble casts and living, organic worlds, and that starts to shine through in Ear Wyrm. If you've been looking forward to the return of Keely and Elissa from Lethal Red Riding Hood, they'll be back in book four. In the meantime, Ear Wyrm explores some of the lives they touched.

A lot like Pratchett's Disc World books, our plan is to keep revisiting old friends while making sure the world is larger than any one character.

Until next time, happy reading! Ann Marie & Leonard
Lost in the Wood Press

Hi, << Test First Name >>

Good Luck Getting It Out of Your Head

Ear Wyrm—book three of the Dark Goddess Chronicles—is nearing completion!

We'd originally wanted to have it off to Elise, our copy editor, by now, but day-job follies cut into our writing time over the summer. How soon we can get it into print will depend largely on Elise's schedule, but we still hope to have it out in time for Christmas.

At least one reader has wondered what book one had to do with book two. If you've been wondering anything similar yourself, you should find Ear Wyrm illuminating. Leaving the two books as independent reads was an intentional decision, but that doesn't mean their fates weren't intertwined.

Just be sure you've read the first two books. As always, we're trying to tell a complete, independent narrative with its own satisfying conclusion despite the loose threads, but we couldn't completely avoid spoilers for either Lethal Red Riding Hood or Gingerdread.

Arise Again, Begin Anew

For a quick glimpse into Ear Wyrm allow us to present you with the lyrics to a traditional winter-solstice hymn from the world of the Dark Goddess Chronicles.

Laetitio is a Latin-equivalent word. Pronounced "lay-teet-shee-oh", it means "joy."

At the drawing of the year
Let us all gather near
As the fire brings good cheer
Sing laetatio

Mother’s breath blows frigid warning
That the heat you should be hoarding
As you pray for a new morning
Sing laetatio

Have you prayed for renewal
Have you gathered winter’s fuel
For the season can be cruel
Sing laetatio

For now the world is ending
And your clothes you should be rending
As you fall with sun descending
Sing laetatio

The world is dark and worn
Your hopes are all forlorn
Will you live to see the morn
Sing laetatio

Oh, Mother hear our singing
To your goodness we are clinging
For the new year you are bringing
Sing laetatio

When will the night be done
With the returning of the sun
A new year to have begun
Sing laetatio

With the coming of the light
And the fleeing of the night
We shall gather up our might
Sing laetatio

Arise again, begin anew
As the new year we pursue
Join together, make it through
Sing laetatio

Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off 2021

The SPFBO exists to shine a light on self-published fantasy. It exists to find excellent books that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. It exists to help readers select, from the enormous range of options, books that have a better chance of entertaining them than a random choice, thereby increasing reader faith in finding a quality self-published read.

We entered Lethal Red Riding Hood in the SPFBO 2021 contest, and so far it's held its own.

The three hundred books entered in the contest got split out among the reviewers at ten different blogs for phase one.

Ours wound up in the thirty books placed with FanFiAddict. Twenty of those thirty books have been eliminated from the competition--some of them well liked by at least some of the judges--but Lethal Red Riding Hood remains.

Of course with the subjective nature of art, no story could ever be a sure-thing in a contest like this, but we're optimistic the broad appeal of our quality prose, compelling characters, and roller-coaster plot will buoy its appeal among multiple judges, giving us a fighting chance for advancement to phase two even if specific other books appeal more to specific judges.

Regardless, it's worth checking out if you'd like help panning for gold among the fantasy authors not everyone knows about yet.

Until next month, happy reading, and may all your terrors be fictional.

Leonard & Ann Marie Wilson
Lost In The Wood Press

Hi, << Test First Name >>

As mentioned in our August newsletter, Advanced Reader Copies of Learning to Spell, a new portal-fantasy romance, are available.

If you'd like the chance to start reading for free without even waiting for the e-book to go on sale, visit one of the sites below to pick up a review copy. All we ask is share your honest opinion when you're done by leaving a review on Amazon and/or GoodReads.

• Booksprout: ARC for Learning To Spell by Lynn Ericson on Booksprout

• BookSirens: https://booksirens.com/book/R1CZZEB/AQH4TO4

Leonard & Ann Marie Wilson

Hi, << Test First Name >>

Readers of the Last Next ARC
 
Our next book, Learning to Spell, hits Amazon late next week, on Thursday, August 19th. As you may recall from previous announcements, Lynn Ericson is here to bring you the same high-quality content in new sub-genre. She's just our fiction of convenience for offering lighter stories in a way that no one who comes looking for a good scare will find out belatedly they've picked up a fantasy romance instead (or vice versa).
 
As promised, you heard it here first that we'll be offering up free advance reader copies of Learning to Spell through BookSirens ahead of the public release in exchange for honest reviews.
 
There was an unfortunate delay in making the ARC available (life happens), so we don't have a direct link to give you yet. The latest word is it will hit BookSirens on Monday the 16th. We'll send out a supplemental announcement when it does.
 
In the meantime, our established ARC team has already been enjoying their free copies since last week. We're still looking to grow the team, too, so if you want in on the action for future books, reach out to us and introduce yourself!

When there's magic in the air, even imaginary friends have their benefits.
The Lovelace Community College of Applied Magic had always been Sylvie’s dream. She would attend. She would excel. She would become one of the most accomplished alumni to ever walk its halls.

But her acceptance letter never came because of one infuriatingly stupid little problem: Lovelace didn’t exist. Sylvie had lived so much of her childhood vicariously through the books and the movies it felt real. Anything that felt that real should exist.

But no. The most magic her life can muster is volunteering at a fantasy convention for a chance to meet Diana Taylor, the actress who starred in the Lovelace movies.

Then everything changes when Diana invites Sylvie up to her room and introduces her to new possibilities that have nothing to do with spending the night with another woman. Well, okay, they could. Or maybe they could involve her pick of two or three intriguing men.

The point isn’t that so many of her new possibilities are lascivious. The point is magic doesn’t have to be at all what she expected for it to be real.
 
 
Ask the Authors
 
We both seem to have a knack for breaking down complex concepts into comprehensible bites. It's a thing we do for fun.
 
To that end, Leonard has set up a Quora account where he mostly fields questions on storytelling (including role-playing games). Feel free to stop in and browse his essays or pose your own questions. Of course we don't know all the answers, but we promise to at least adopt an air of sagacity when we shrug our shoulders.

After Con Report: InConJunction
 
We started last month by attending InConJunction 40 in Indianapolis, IN. We learned a lot in our first foray as convention vendors and really enjoyed meeting both readers and fellow authors.

We'll be posting reviews of some of the books we picked up while we were there both on our Facebook page and in the blog on our author page. Be on the lookout for our first one this weekend for "Charlie Harmer Takes a Ride" by Brendan Detzner.

Hi, << Test First Name >>

More Free Reads!
We've made a limited supply of review copies of both Lethal Red Riding Hood and Gingerdread available for download through Book Sirens. All we ask is that if you claim a copy, you leave an honest review on Amazon or Goodreads--preferably both.
 
If we're happy with the number of reviews we get out of this promotion, we plan to offer the same opportunity for future books, and we'll be announcing their availability here first.
 
Download Lethal Red Riding Hood: https://booksirens.com/book/CGK5FHV/84DDEN9
Download Gingerdread: https://booksirens.com/book/Y3RURZT/I7TGHKS

Load Your Cannon!
Well, okay: Load our canon--on the web browser of your choice.
 
The world of Dark Goddess Chronicles is going live with two interlinked sites where you can look up details of who's who and what's what in the setting.
 
We'll try to keep spoilers to a minimum while still making them useful references, but if you're a purist in avoiding spoilers, read the books first!
 
The list of entries will continue to grow as we make more books available and as we continue to upload the backlog of setting information.
 
There's a lot of overlap between the two sites. We're experimenting to find out what's most fun and useful.
 
Check them out for yourself and let us know about both your favorite bits and your not-so-favorite bits. We're always happy to hear from you.
 
http://darkgoddesschronicles.com
https://www.scabard.com/pbs/campaign/1116528

Yes, We Actually Exist!
Want to Meet Us?
 
Having this project to keep us busy through the pandemic was great, but now that we're fully vaccinated, we're looking forward to finally being able to get out for some actual meet and greet.
 
Our first stop is going to be the InConJunction science fiction and fantasy convention in Indianapolis, Indiana, July 2nd - 4th. If you're there, please track down our table and say, "Hi!"
 
https://www.inconjunction.org
 
Then on July 22nd from 5:00 to 6:00 we'll be talking self-publishing at the Faulkner County Library in Conway, Arkansas, as part of a series of presentations on the writing process.

https://fcl.org

Leonard & Ann Marie Wilson
Lost In The Wood Press

Hi, << Test First Name >>

4
A Different Shade of Fantasy
Did you ever notice how our Lost in the Wood logo resembles a yin-yang symbol? Go look. We'll wait.

That's no coincidence. Life is a balancing act. That's why we don't write grimdark. Despair is meaningless without hope. Death is meaningless without life. Darkness would hold no terrors without the existence of light.

Anything that remains unchanged long enough will slowly fade from human awareness. We need contrasts to experience anything. We need contrasts to live.

So before we return to the high-stakes horror of our Dark Goddess Chronicles, we'll invite you to cleanse your palette this summer with the first of our more playful Freyjur Fantasies novels.

Freyjur Fantasy stories are the "yang" to our Dark Goddess "yin". That doesn't mean they're all sweetness and light. What they are is smaller, more personal, and more life-affirming. Less violence. More sex.

Freyjur Fantasies will be stories about personal relationships, self-discovery, sexual themes, and good old unreliable magic. Most of all, like Dark Goddess Chronicles, they're all about the fun. We'll just be visiting it on the other side of the mirror.

So if you want to join us in cleansing your palate, stay tuned for the release of our first Freyjur Fantasy:

Learning to Spell
The Lovelace Community College of Applied Magic had always been Sylvie’s dream. She would attend. She would excel. She would become one of the most accomplished alumni to ever walk its halls.

But her acceptance letter never came because of one infuriatingly stupid little problem: Lovelace didn’t exist.

Sylvie had lived so much of her childhood vicariously through the books and the movies it felt real. Anything that felt that real should exist. 

But no. The most magic her life can muster is volunteering at a fantasy convention for a chance to meet Diana Taylor, the actress who starred in the Lovelace movies.

Then everything changes when Diana invites Sylvie up to her room and introduces her to new possibilities that have nothing to do with spending the night with another woman. Well, okay, they could. Or maybe they could involve her pick of two or three intriguing men.

The point isn’t that so many of her new possibilities are lascivious. The point is magic doesn’t have to be at all what she expected for it to be real.

Assembling a Launch Team
The Internet has groups for writers and groups for readers. The groups for readers have to fight to keep  writers there under control (if not ostracized entirely) or they become dumping grounds for self-promotion spam, all the readers go away, and they die an agonizing death.

This becomes a catch-22 situation, though, for both groups. The readers go to reader groups for book recommendations, and the same handful of popular books and authors get recommended over and over and over and over and over ad nauseum. "Hidden gems" remain hidden.

We see posts like the one below ALL THE TIME, where our stories are clearly what the readers are looking for, but we're forbidden from mentioning that by the rules of the group.

So writers need friends who become fans and fans who become friends--readers who honestly read their genre, love their genre, love their work, and are willing to say so in the comforting presence of other fans of the same genre. But like most writers and so many readers, we're raging introverts. The connections are hard to make.

Our grand strategy is to write stories that earn repeat business, but no one's going to become a repeat customer before they know we exist.

If you're a fantasy fan who reads our stories, actually loves our stories, and is willing to mention that to other fantasy fans, and if you think it would be great if we had the time and resources to publish them more often, we'd love for you to reach out to us and say so.

Building an advance-reader team of true fans who'll post reviews and advocate for us in return for free early access to the stories is going to be a crucial next step down this road.

Until Next Time
Thanks so much for your time and attention. The next Dark Goddess Chronicles book is half written, and we'll alert you here as soon as there's more to tell.

Leonard & Ann Marie Wilson
Lost In The Wood Press

Hi, << Test First Name >>

The Books We Love to Hate--or Something

So I've noticed a thing since I started joining reading groups: Even the most beloved books have a lot people who hate them passionately.

When someone comes out and declares a book I consider sociopathic rubbish to be a masterpiece, it's hard not to think of it as a personal attack.

When someone comes out and declares a book I love to be trash, it's hard not to take it as a personal attack.

And--clearly--from the patterns in the conversational threads, that's just a basic human reaction.

It puts me in mind of my college days and all the snobbery I had to endure from the gatekeepers of literature who were determined that they knew what constituted true "art".

And you know what their definitions of art never involved? They never involved either fantasy or science fiction. Never, that is, unless it was fantasy or science fiction that had gotten slipped into an anthology that some supposed higher authority had declared contained only great art. Then it was fabulous. It was "in".

My point and my take-away are this: Literature is art, and no art is inherently great except that thinking makes it so.

Even sales figures are an arbitrary measure of greatness because so much of sales is about who you know, what budget you have, marketing savvy that has zero to do with the art itself, and plain dumb luck.

If not for the efforts of just two of Shakespeare's friends a few years after his death, his plays would have disappeared into oblivion and we never would have heard of him.

Given all that, as far as I'm concerned, it really doesn't help anything to proclaim a book is wonderful or awful outside of a purely technical sense.

Instead, I'm going to try to start saying I had a great (or not-so-great) personal experience with it.

-- Leonard
If you'd like to see more of Leonard's thoughts, www.lostinthewood.net/blog
 

Do you like audiobooks?

While they’ll never replace the written word, we find audio books are a great way to reclaim time when your hands and eyes are occupied with things like driving, exercise, household maintenance, or anything else that doesn’t take a great deal of mental effort but would otherwise make reading impossible.

We’ve started tinkering with creating audio versions of our own Lost in the Wood Press books, and we’re looking for beta listeners.

If you’re interested in being one of the first to hear a performance of our “Conspiracy of One” and would be willing to offer feedback, please reach out to us by sending an e-mail to us at LostInTheWoodPress@gmail.com with Audio Book Beta in the subject line.  

Until next month, happy reading, and may all your terrors be fictional.

Leonard & Ann Marie Wilson
Lost In The Wood Press

Hi, 

April showers bring both May flowers and a return to the world of Dark Goddess Chronicles with our new novella, Gingerdread, available April 15th from Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and on Kindle Unlimited.

Jordan hadn’t wished his stepmother, Eva, dead. A little something involving spiders would have served vengeance quite nicely. Still, he hadn’t exactly grieved when they said she’d died in the fire. A protective big brother will only forgive so many sins against his sister.
 
Even if Eva had been alive, though, what business would she have begging for his help now—a year later? And how insane was he to even consider offering help, much less seek out where her voice was coming from on such a miserable dark night?
 
As heir presumptive to the barony and a soon-to-be knight in training, Jordan refuses to let fear stop him from seeking answers to impossible questions.
 
But when the questions keep piling up, each darker and more dreadful than the last, only one thing becomes crystal clear: he’ll never look at an oven the same way again.

Gingerdread embodies our philosophy that the Dark Goddess setting should be a living, breathing world—bigger and more complex than any one character or story arc, but full of familiar names, faces, and locations that you we’ll invite you to visit repeatedly. Blame it on our background playing table-top role-playing games or maybe our love for Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, but while we believe that each individual story should be a fast-moving rollercoaster ride, we also want to be able to stop and explore the interesting things we discover along the way.
 
Some storytellers love to tell you that they meticulously plot out every detail of their sweeping epics. We are not those storytellers. Oh, we have secrets planned for several books out, but knowing everything that was going to happen before we wrote it would just be boring. Sister Adalva is a perfect case in point:
 

“Demons and Witches of the Northern Steppes,” [Elissa] read the title of one aloud. “You can always count on Sister Adalva to go for the heartwarming parables, can’t you?” She flipped through the book to an eye-catching illumination of a wicked-looking giant of a woman with pallid green skin, standing amidst the mountain peaks as lightning from the swirling black clouds behind her struck down the diminutive figures at her feet.

“Chooali the Troll Queen,” Elissa read. “Chooali roamed the mountains between the headwaters of the Sanguine and Emerald rivers until slain by Agnar the Righteous in the ninth century of the modern era. The sword he used to defeat her was blessed by the sisters of Belgrimm Abbey, and bathed in the blood of…” She stopped reading in mid-sentence and snapped the book closed. “Oh, right: it’s gory bloodbaths you can always count on Sister Adalva for,” she said sarcastically, and slipped the book into its temporary home on the shelves.


When we were writing Lethal Red Riding Hood we had no idea Sister Adalva even existed until Elissa pulled a book at random and started flipping through it, and she had no other reason to exist in that story, but we wanted to know more about who this woman was and why she wrote what she wrote. So now she’s back as a pivotal character in Gingerdread--a previously unplanned story that does need her and that we had a lot of fun writing.
 
You don’t need to read Lethal Red Riding Hood before reading Gingerdread. You don’t need to read Gingerdread before reading Lethal Red Riding Hood.  But the two books are woven together by numerous little strands to create a more meaningful whole, and which will continue to gather momentum as the chronicles snowball.
 
If you love what you’re reading, please help out by spreading the word, and by leaving us reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, and anywhere else you’re inclined to. We’re very happy with our day jobs, but we love telling stories enough that when the inevitable day comes that we part ways with them we could step right into doing this for you full time without sacrificing any of the production quality our day jobs buy.
 
Until next month, happy reading, and may all your terrors be fictional.

Leonard & Ann Marie Wilson
Lost In The Wood Press
 
P.S.: If you haven’t grabbed your copy of Lethal Red Riding Hood yet, we’ve scheduled a sale of the Kindle version that will start on April 15^th to celebrate the release of Gingerdread.
 

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Hi, 

We’re excited to announce that Lethal Red Riding Hood is now live on Amazon, complete with its first review:

https://www.amazon.com/Lethal-Riding-Hood-Goddess-Chronicles/dp/173555250X/ref=sr_1_1?crid

Take a free look inside for yourself on the Amazon web site. Follow us that far and we’re confident you’ll want to see more.

You can purchase the full novel right there on Amazon in either Kindle edition or paperback.

The best news, though, is for Kindle Unlimited subscribers.

Kindle Unlimited is perfect for trying out epic-length books like Lethal Red Riding Hood, and we’re very happy to be offering you the option. It means you’ve already paid for your chance to just pick up the novel and read it cover to cover.

The best part for you? Authors on Kindle Unlimited get rewarded for writing page turners. It pays royalties by the page, not by the book.

As authors, we think that rocks because we totally believe that once you do start reading you’re going to stay with us right to the end—then close the book eager for our next story.

If that's not the sort of quality we deliver, then that's on us and we're fine not getting paid for anything you didn't read. And if for any reason you're not completely satisfied, Kindle Unlimited will let you put our book right back on the electronic shelf and you'll be out nothing more than the time we did manage to keep you entertained. That's what we call a win-win.

Regardless of how you choose to do it, though, we hope you’ll join on us on a delightfully dark journey down the forest path that is Lethal Red Riding Hood.

Thank you for your time,

Leonard & Ann Marie