Hello Readers! Would you believe it, it’s been an extraordinarily long time since we’ve last talked. This is because life happened, and it happened a lot to me in the past year.
So, to start off, we’re going to address the two major elephants in the room.
One, I have covid. Right now. As I write to you.
This was actually surprising to me as I never leave my house, and also I really really need to get groceries as I have been in a reclusive writing state for about two months, but; welp. Here I am. Thankfully I both can’t taste anything and also had an extensive back catalog of groceries to eat my way through, so I’m fine. I’m planning a huge grocery shopping trip next weekend as a result of this because I plan to be healthy by then…
But then again I also planned to beat covid in three days.
Listen, writers do a lot of planning and nothing ever goes the way it should; which brings me to…
The Joker’s Last Laugh
Once upon a time, there was a girl in a magical world who longed to go home…
That girl was me.
I thought going home would solve all of my problems, but I was proven wrong when I was forced through the Jabberwock’s looking glass against my will. Trapped in Oxford, I was made to watch as the one I loved and everything I knew turned to stone.
But I was never one to stay where I belong, nor listen to others’ warnings, so I returned, only to be thrown into a world of disarray.
Chess is threatening war, the Kingdom of Hearts has been drained of color, and the one true heir to the throne of Cards is missing. At the same time, the man behind it all, my husband, sits gloating with a title that was never meant to be his, surrounded by a parade of Alice look-alikes. The secrets he holds could lead to Wonderland’s damnation…
But in the end, it is I who holds all the cards.
What a book.
Fun fact, did you know that the Alice series was supposed to be done in may but then took so extraordinarily long to finish that I literally had to move my whole publishing schedule around it? No? Well, now you do.
Alice has a whole slew of cultural references and nods in it, so it’s always been an immensely difficult series to write, but my god did I not expect it to take this long, nor for me to be writing this blog post while coughing my head off. But sometimes life goes like that.
Anyway; I am immensely proud of this book and the efforts it took, as well as the love and care that went into it. It is packed full of detail, adventure, and character. I feel like this book is where we finally see Alice fully grow up and learn to love.
There were some heartbreaking character losses in the past few books, but in this one we finally get so much development and change. More than that, we begin to see past Claude and Fitz’s veneers, learn more about Eleanor Grey, say goodbye to Reginald, and see some familiar faces.
With the last book, I also received a slew of emails from readers, many of whom were asking for a major spoiler out of concern for their own emotional well beings.
Normally, I am of the opinion that books should not be spoiler, but if you have formed an emotional attachment to a character and are anxious, I can partially understand as a sufferer of generalized anxiety.
Therefore, out of interest of kindness, if you find yourself personally in need of a spoiler, I provide you with this button to bring you to a nondescript jpg file which will give you a simple yes or no. This is not a joke, this is not fun blog content; this is what it says on the tin. Hover or click at your own risk.
Does he live and do we see him again?
So, yeah. There’s that.
What’s next?
Now that Alice is done, you’re probably wondering what I’m going to do with my life. This saddens me because I too would like to wonder as well, wondering would give me so many more possibilities than knows.
Welp, sadly I know, and as you will learn in the Joker’s Last Laugh, sometimes not knowing is far more interesting and overall better.
Though, I like what I’m going to do, so I don’t know why I’m saying not knowing is better. I mean, I’m excited, I’ve been talking nonstop about this series for months.
Maybe it’s because there’s something inbetween, and that something is…
B. A. Lovejoy’s Secular Holiday Short!
Did you know that people often mistake secular and nonsecular for meaning the wrong definitions?
Nonsecular actually means pertaining to religious or spiritual matters, and secular means not overly of specifically religious.
This is to say; I’m writing another holiday short this year!
If you weren’t paying attention, I did this last year too, and it is available on my shorts page, which I am too lazy to link to at the moment. Those wonderful 10k words of holiday goodness were not tied to any one religion, and helped many of you get your fix for the holiday season– they were also stolen earlier this month by another author, had a seven hundred word sex scene tacked on, and then sold on the kindle store for roughly the same price as one of my books.
And so, while my holiday story will debut on this website, I’ll be working on creating a tiny little package of unique holiday content to tie together next year, wrap with a bow, and post for free on the kindle store so it’s a little harder to steal from me.
The fact that only ten percent of your content can be available somewhere else, however, means that I am going to be working hard to fill that holiday shorts anthology this coming year out of spite and does sort of ruin the whole free holiday shorts for my followers thing but, welp, here we are. Maybe I’ll retool the Jack Frost book I keep picking up and putting down every year into something special and throw in the shorts as an extra treat in it; we’ll see.
I have another series coming!
That’s right, kids; I have another series coming and here’s the pinterest board.
It’s hard to fully explain what’s going on here sans my brilliant editor, but I’m going to try.
See, what I’m writing is a dark academia witch series inspired by the psychology and anatomy wars with a heavier presence of shapeshifting familiars, a 1960s setting, and a lot of different elements at play here.
The series takes place in America, the school takes a lot of inspiration from the Ivies, and I’m not saying that there’s going to be some secret societies involved, but…
Our heroine is Olive, the middle child amongst twelve named after the fruit from the canning factory her father worked at. She was the only one in her family to be born with a familiar and the only person in her bloodline to have any magical ability, let alone abilities worthy of going to the University of the Unseen, the premier magical institution in the country where students need a letter of recommendation and an assigned mentor just to attend.
Olive does not have just any mentor, however, but the famed Dr. James Jones; the world renown pyscheologist studying the tether between a human body and its soul. A man who scarcely even believes that women belong in the world of academia to begin with, yet is convinced that he sees something more in her. Despite his prejudices, working under Dr. Jones is a chance Olive can’t give up…
Despite the fact that the position comes built in with its own enemies and rivals, and puts her at odds with the university’s other leading psycheologist Dr. Avarelle and his charming, far too likeable apprentice, Quinn.
Olive knows that she should stay away from Quinn, and yet something about him pulls her in. In another life, another world, or even another place; they could be friends or more. But here? As the academic rules and limitations are torn down and rebuilt around them following the murder of a familiar at his master’s own hands?
Science must come first, logic must prevail, and the unexplained must be explained. Olive cannot fall for Quinn’s taunting smiles and teasing laughs. The future of magic and the Unseen Arts depends on it…
And that’s my unofficial description. It’s looking like three to five books max.
Also Olive talks a lot. Like, a lot. I love a babbling heroine.
ARCS will be dropping for this one in January and I’ll be posting sign up links if you want to read and review it prior to release towards the end of December/beginning of January.
Anyway, while you’re looking around my website (and if you’re up to date on Alice), check the Joker button starting December 11th for the final prologue.
B. A. Lovejoy 