Hello Readers and welcome back to my blog; we’re going to start today with a note on review copies and then go into talking about the Prison of Hearts immediately afterwards.

So if you’ve been here for a while, you likely know that I do review copies through Booksirens because I’ve had previous books leaked prior to release, and that with certain properties I don’t do ARCs but instead review copies because of that history. You’ve likely also realized that there’s some minor detail changes between review copies and release copies, a lot of this being because of issues later found and reported before the books go to print or because of the markings and variations I put on my books in order to tell where a copy was leaked from. With the Prison of Hearts, this detail is pretty large and evident, it’s the inside edition of the cover; I. e. the cover shown to you when you first open the book. The actual cover that shows on your ereader is exactly the same, this is just what the inside edition looks like and was a larger way for me to tell if a book has been leaked from a review website vs. the amazon listing. All in all it just helps me legally if amazon ever comes after me for having my books found on piracy websites, and this extra layer of protection helps me stay in kindle unlimited/priced low.

This was also kind of because we’re changing cover designers, since there were a lot of issues with the covers for Spades and Hearts that I had to correct before publication, such as differences in the font, designs, sizing, and so forth– this was just a really convenient different to have on the inside of review copies. (And also I initially forgot to change it when uploading ebook copies)

With the final book in the Alice series, the Joker’s last laugh, we’ll also see another cover designer for the books. This is because unfortunately the designer for Spades and Hearts crossed a lot of personal boundaries for me and made me uncomfortable, and the designer for Diamonds and Clovers is booked a great deal of the time; so we’re getting a third cover artist. Which is a lot of cover designers for one five book series, but hopefully we’ll be able to keep this one on for the next series.

Again, I’m not really a huge fan of being harassed or having the lines blurred with professionalism here, and I’m definitely also not a huge fan of having my boundaries pushed to the extent where I personally felt more comfortable editing the incorrect details of the covers I commissioned rather than being able to write more books for you guys.

I’m commissioning the covers for the Joker’s last laugh next week and I have blocked the cover designer for Spades and Hearts; I currently can’t say if this means in the future that we will have any further changes to covers for Spades and Hearts, but I can say that as of right now I feel really uncomfortable thinking about working more with the current versions of these covers. I have templates and source files for the placements and fonts for all assets on the Alice covers and am able to provide the fonts for the covers when asked, so I’m not fully sure why these covers continually turned out the way that they did, but in the future I do not plan to continue to give chances and opportunities to cover artists who go out of their way to make me uncomfortable and continue not to listen to what I try to communicate to them. It just doesn’t make sense for me to write headstrong heroines and then nervously throw hundreds of dollars and stars towards someone who refuses to respect my time and effort or attempt to work professionally with me.

But that’s the end of that weird rant/note.

Let’s talk the Prison of Hearts and Spoilers!

This is my personal plea after three instances;

Please do not post spoilers for the Prison of Hearts or comment about the ending on any Pick a Card social media posts!

I love you guys, I really, really do; but I am begging you not to do this, especially as I move into drafting and editing for another series and go largely social media silent.

There is no way that I can catch you quickly enough to prevent someone else from seeing those spoilers, and it’s a long book. The current kindle listing is severely understating the length of the book because of how long page estimates take, but this is about 13k words longer than the Palace of Spades, and the spoilers that have been posted happened right at the ending.

I know you want to talk about the ending, I know you have questions, I’ve had nine emails in the past five days so I am just going to remind everyone of two facts here….

B. A. Lovejoy Breaks Down her Business Model and Explains the Importance of Her Editor (major series spoilers ahead but if you can’t live without knowing then please read this):

Here’s the two things you need to know.

1. I have an editor, and while sometimes she wishes I was writing horror, she does put her foot down every now and again and remind me what I’m about.
2. I am a romance author. This is what she has to remind me of.

What happened to Kaeden in the Prison of Hearts was always going to happen to Kaeden, the main thing that’s changed over the course of drafting these books was his importance to the story and his relationship to Alice. In an initial draft of the Prison of Hearts things were a bit more…. final.

I. E. It was not Reginald that took that tumble in the Garden of Hearts. But overtime three very important things happened:

1. Kaeden won every single poll to such an extent where his fate had to be changed because there’s been hundred of votes and unless we somehow get a Thomas Caard fueled tiktok storm coming to raid my polls, there is no way that Thomas can come out on top.
2. My editor put her foot down while working on the second book and said what happens to him can’t be fully lethal.
3. I fell on my own sword and every reader who said they could predict my favorite boys based on certain traits was right about me.

Does this necessarily mean he’s endgame? No.

Does this necessarily mean that the great awful thing that happened to him will be reversed? No.

This is basically just me confirming right now and right here that he’s not dead dead.

Dead to the world, yes. But not dead dead.

That’s all I have to say.