L is for ... The Loveless Princess
As I mentioned in letter E, Eirwyn has stolen the show. A villain in many other Foxwick stories, she has a chance to tell her story in The Loveless Princess. I hope to finish writing this first draft next month and perhaps publish it around October this year.
Here is the work-in-progress book description:
Fairy tales have happy endings.
Sixteen-year-old Princess Eirwyn wants to believe in fairy tales. It’s why she sneaks out of the castle several nights a week in search for her father and his family. Her mother, Queen Vereina of Wintermill, prefers to keep her secrets and has her own plans for her daughter.
One night, Eirwyn’s mother catches her out of the castle and locks her in her room. But Eirwyn uses her magical gifts to escape, and with the help of Orion, the sort of common boy her mother fears her daughter will love, Eirwyn is close to discovering what happened to her father.
But Queen Vereina won't allow her daughter the pleasure of knowing her father. She imprisons Orion and forces Eirwyn to travel to Foxwick to marry Prince Javen. The love potion feels heavy in her bag, but Eirwyn has little choice. The queen will kill Orion otherwise. Can Eirwyn fall in love with the kind and handsome prince when she loves another? With love potion in hand, Eirwyn will soon learn life is not a fairy tale.
And she’ll have to make her own choices, no matter the consequences.
A brief unedited excerpt from The Loveless Princess:
My cloak’s hem brushed against the wooden floorboards as I made my way to the gambling table, a rectangular oak table that could seat eight. At the moment, a woman and three other men sat there, playing cards in their hands and coins piling before them. They didn’t look up at me.
“Mind if I join the next game?” I held up my clinking coin purse.
The man closest to me rubbed his beard, and his beady eyes narrowed upon the bag. “If ya can pay, then ya can play.”
The woman across from me shoved the chair across from her out. Her gap-toothed grin sent shivers down my spine. “Sit down, sweetheart.”
“Thank you.” Perching on the chair, I peered toward these four people from behind the edge of my cloak’s hood. The woman’s watery dark eyes couldn’t belong to my family’s. One man had red hair, the beady-eyed man had none of my delicate features, and the third man, although very slender, had a bulbous nose and green eyes. I blew out air through my nostrils. Just like the previous thirteen moons I’ve searched, I still couldn’t find any possible family members. Perhaps what the castle’s servants said was true: My father’s family was dead.
