L.S. May's Blog

So today marks 10 years since my first book went out into the world for sale. What.

In celebration, the audiobook for Confessions of Innocence has just been released (as mentioned in previous posts, these are AI-read audiobooks. If that's not your thing, try the ebook instead. If you're not sure, you can listen to a sample.) You can get it on Amazon or Audible (and in Audible plus if you have a subscription!)

If you're not in the loop, here's the blurb:

Innocence Cooper was born to rule. She will inherit leadership of the Council of good magic when her father dies or retires. Every witch in the world knows her name. None can ever know her secret.

Her active power - controlling fire - is granted by the evil spirits, not the good ones. A prophecy made decades before her birth declares she will rule over all evil magic.

For seventeen years, Innocence has done the best she can to ignore it. But then the new kid reveals he knows her secret, he shares her power and he came to recruit her.

Her secret is getting out.

This book was the first in a five book series, which also had a spin off series (The Witch's Heir series) so over the years there has been a lot going on in this space. That's eight books, plus that bonus story in the back of book 5 of the Innocence Cooper series. And that other bonus story on the blog. (Not to mention various alternate openings and deleted scenes on the blog.)

And, if you look to your just down below, you'll see another alternate... this time an ending, of sorts. So if you're familiar with the story... (and if you're not, mild spoilers on their way, so go read the whole series first. Heh.) ...there are two boys and Innocence ends up with one of them. I did have someone remark to me that they thought she should have ended up with the other. Which on one hand I get, and on the other I totally don't. See, Innocence and the boy she didn't end up with have a pretty deep connection and understanding of each other. They're very supportive of one another, but also permissive and accepting of each other when they probably shouldn't be. The boy she did end up with challenges her and clashes with her and just... has more spark in their interactions.

They do say the best love triangles are not about the character choosing which romantic partner to be with, but choosing which version of themselves to be, and I think that rings true for me in this case - that Innocence chose her light side over the darkness within her.

But I - I love them both. So I tried it. And look, it's not the whole ending. It's a scene in the last chapter. And it was tough to write, because I genuinely felt it was going against some fundamental parts of the character and story, but... maybe it's fun for those of you that wanted it to go that way? [image error] age_of_innocencealtend.pdfFile Size: 70 kbFile Type: pdfDownload File The spoilers only get worse down here, ye hath been warned.

Wow, so eight books following vaguely the same characters in vaguely the same world, surely I've written everything I wanted to write... but I have been hinting Jamie X Cinder for a while - in the bonus story in the back of book 5, in the bonus story on the blog and even in the final book in The Witch's Heir trilogy. It's a little dangling plot thread that's bothered me now and again, because we don't get to see a lot of them, and while it's implied Jamie maybe will try to date her at some point, it just never fit anywhere... until now. So here's a short and hopefully sweet scene of Jamie finally making a characteristically awkward move.

[image error] withoutinnocence.pdfFile Size: 67 kbFile Type: pdfDownload File Aside from little bonus stories, I haven't written anything in the Innocence Cooper universe for a while... but if you are looking for something to scratch that itch, I have to say I do feel my latest series, Love No Evil, has a bit of the 'spiritual successor' vibes. A bit of moral grey stuff, a bit of teenagers with too much power, a bit of betrayal and love across enemy lines kind of thing. It's in a dystopian setting rather than a fantasy one, but I think it hits a lot of the same notes anyway... Check it out.

So, some people like to listen to books these days. If you're one of them, you can now listen to The Reaper's Heart. Available on Amazon, Audible and through Audible plus. Grab it here.

This audiobook is narrated by Amazon's virtual voice (AI.) Human narrators and professional sound equipment cost a lot, and this is an affordable way for me to get audiobooks out into the world.

If you already have the ebook, you can get the audiobook for a reduced rate. You might even be able to get a free trial of Audible and listen for free!

So, why now?
Amazon has just opened up the use of virtual voice to authors in my part of the world.

Are other L S May books coming to audio?
Even though virtual voice takes care of the reading, it still takes a lot of time to go through and make sure everything sounds right (words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently are an example of something that often needs a human to check/fix.) Because of that effort involved, I won't guarantee that all my books will make it to audio format.

I am currently working on the audio format of Waiting For Dawn, so that will definitely be available as an audiobook soon. I expect to put out other books in audio as time goes on, but I have no clear plan for which books I will do when at present. If there's one you'd especially like to hear, please do let me know.

----
Apart from audio, what am I working on?
Book 3 in the Love No Evil series, Love is War is underway, as is Angel of Fortune, a Reaper's Heart spinoff. Neither are close enough to completion for me to dare to indicate a time of release, but I will let you know!

Love Corrupts All, the sequel to Love No Evil is out now! Currently in KU and available in ebook format. As per usual, paperback to follow in a week or two.

Blurb:
Rose chose her side and married Ethan to take her place as Queen of Blackthorn. But the war with the outsiders is escalating, and Ethan is struggling with the loss of his father and his new role as king. Rose can feel her new life is under threat, and she doesn't know how far she'll go to protect it.

Meanwhile, on the outside, Jayden joins a mission where, if he's successful, he will destroy Rose and Blackthorn alike, but with his family taken prisoner, and the girl he loves scarred from Ethan's attack, he doesn't care.


Now, when I wrote Love No Evil I was thinking it would be a standalone. Yes, there are suggestions of future danger, but it was more supposed to be about the cost of Rose's choices than setting up things in the future. But turns out there's a sequel! And this will not be the last book in this series (if you've read it, you'll probably have guessed - no way would I just leave things like that!) There's definitely at least one more book (Book #3, tentatively titled Love is War), but possibly more after that...

I'm going to write a bit about my thoughts on the story and writing it below - may contain spoilers!

Like Love No Evil this one was tricky to write. Initially it was going to just follow Jayden, but that felt like too much of a departure from the first one and the characters and world we knew and loved from there, plus there were interesting things going on with Rose and Ethan that I think were worth showing. So there's some Jayden POV and some Rose POV.

More than any book I've written previously, this one had a theme. The title "Love Corrupts All" is a fun play on "Power corrupts" and "Love Conquers All." I think both of those ideas are explored a little, but the main theme is right there in the title - love, which is supposed to be this beautiful force, instead driving people to do things which range from 'against the rules' to straight-up 'evil'.  This series has always played with the idea that love might not always be a good thing - like when you're in love with the 'bad guy' - and it was fun to take those ideas a little bit further.

I think there's a lot of fun stuff in this one, and also a bit of setup for book 3 that will hopefully have you excited for that one too.

Remember when I said I was so glad I planned for Love No Evil to be a standalone? Well, some people had the nerve to ask me what happens next. And so I started thinking about it. Wrote some of it down. Scrapped 20 000 words. Wrote some more. Tossed it all aside and wrote another opening. Switched POV characters. Switched back. Debated rewriting the beginning again. Ugh.

It's called Love Corrupts All. It's about what happens next - mild spoilers for Love No Evil to follow and all, but, it's about Ethan and Rose dealing with the looming and escalating threat from the outside. It's about Jayden, officially joining the outsiders' military and trying to win Zoey's heart. It's about Matt, surprisingly. And wait until you see how it ends, because I for one did not see it coming.

Then it will be on to book 3 in the Love No Evil trilogy(?), tentatively titled Love is War. As for when you'll see that? I couldn't tell you - first I have to figure out Love Corrupts All, which could take somewhere between 2 months and forever. But it will exist. One day.

And for you in the back wondering about Angel of Fortune - a new book set in the world of The Reaper's Heart Series? It has found itself on the back burner, as life and other books have jumped in front of it screaming for my attention, but rest assured it is still in the works. At this point my aim is for something to be out by the end of the year, and if Love Corrupts All doesn't fall into place, it will be this. There's also a remote chance for both, but that's far from guaranteed.

So, yup, I am still alive. And yup, things are still happening.

Waiting For Dawn is here!

You can grab it from Amazon (kindle unlimited, or purchase the ebook to make it yours to keep!) Paperback to follow.

But wait - what is it even about? Waiting For Dawn is my veeery loose retelling of Sleeping Beauty. The back cover blurb is thus:
Princess Dawn is cursed to sleep forever when she turns eighteen. The only way to break the curse is if she has the hand of her true love before that day, but despite her mother's efforts to force a wedding, no man is willing to marry a cursed bride. With time running out, Dawn only has one option left - a magic book gifted by the fairy who cursed her. It could be a trap, but she has to write in it to find out.

Half a continent away, Prince Josef is grieving the loss of his mother when an unruly fairy is found disturbing the peace in a nearby village. The fairy disappears as suddenly as she arrived, but she leaves behind a book that is more than it first appears…

Inspired by Sleeping Beauty, Waiting For Dawn is a charming story about love, family and friendship.

Hope you like it. It was a lot of fun to write :)

In other news... Love No Evil 2 will be a thing. Maybe not soon, but it is officially in progress. Angel of Fortune has stalled a little (standalone set in the world of The Reaper's Heart) but is also in progress.

This will be my post-Love No Evil release post... which will contain spoilers both large and small for the book. If you haven't yet read the book and do not like spoilers, please go here and read the book first.

Done? Okay, moving on.

So, the confession: Love No Evil is not the book I was going to write. I admit I don't recall how the idea first came to me, but The Plan was to write a story about a quote-unquote evil prince who nevertheless was in love... and the girl he was in love with, who rebuffed him at every turn - despite sharing his feelings - because she was a key part of the rebellion against him and his father's rule. The 'point' of the book was going to be that sometimes you love people that are wrong for you, and you have to walk away.

You can probably see a sort of warped reflection of the book in that, but it's not all how it happened. For starters, Rose didn't walk away. Ethan never quite reached evil... arguably. In his own mind, he chose the lesser of two evils. He always had a reason - was never cruel for the sake of it. And also, Leslie's organisation didn't exactly have clean hands... which made things more complicated for Rose, because choosing them wasn't the moral choice either.

And complicated is kind of how I feel about this book. It was probably the hardest to write of anything I've put out. Everyone had secrets, told lies, pretended and manipulated. There were plot lines I started and then they didn't fit, so they had to be hacked out (for example, Rose was going to have had a younger brother.) Oh, and I wrote the whole thing completely out of order and then had to jigsaw puzzle it back together.

So, wow - never doing that again. So glad I planned all along for this to be a standalone.

Anyway, I'm also in the middle of writing two other books that are most likely destined to be standalones - a book I've mentioned before that is set in the same world as The Reaper's Heart books, but following a new character (an Angel of Fortune) and a Sleeping Beauty... well, it's not a retelling. Perhaps the best way to describe it is loosely inspired by sleeping beauty. There is a princess. She has a sleeping curse. There is a prince who will hopefully save her from it in the end.

And as for the Love No Evil sequel... it does not exist. It may not ever exist. But if it is to exist, it will be after I've got those two off my plate. I'm not even really brainstorming about it at this time, but I think it would have to follow Jayden for a bit - my precious only sane character in the whole Love No Evil universe.

Love No Evil is available now - grab yours here in paperback, ebook or KU

In a dystopian future, the self-declared king executes Rose's parents for trespassing. In retaliation, she joins an organisation dedicated to killing him and starts training as an assassin. He's cruel and arbitrary, and she knows the world will be better off without him.

The only problem is Rose's heart has always belonged to the king's only child, Prince Ethan Blackthorn. But will Ethan ever be able to forgive her when he finds out what she's involved in? And what if Ethan is more like his father than anyone anticipated?

Hope you enjoy!

Well, they are... in progress.

So, the Demons trilogy has been out almost a year, and then what? Nothing. No new books :(

But they are coming. I'm hopeful for one out before the end of the year, and there's a slim possibility of two.

First: Love No Evil, the most likely to be released this year.
This is a standalone (like Over the Edge was? Ha ha... probably not. I probably mean it this time. Probably.)
It's a slight departure from the usual, as it's a dystopia, not a paranormal/fantasy etc. I mean, it's a Romance with a dystopian backdrop, if we're being honest here.

Draft back cover blurb here:
Before Rose was born, Cain Blackthorn led a military coup and installed himself as king. When he executes Rose's parents, apparently for trespassing, she joins an organisation dedicated to taking him out and starts training as an assassin
But Rose's heart has always belonged to the prince, Cain's only child, Ethan Blackthorn. But will Ethan ever be able to forgive her, when he finds out what she's involved in? And what if Ethan is more like his father than anyone anticipated?

And the other?
Tentatively titled Angel of Fortune
Probably a novella (so a bit shorter than usual), set in the same world as The Reaper's Heart series (so yes, some of your favourites will turn up at some point.)
In case the title didn't give it away, this book follows an Angel of Fortune - a girl who has just become one and has to figure out her new powers and how her life is going to be with them. But the Angels of Fortune are basically karma personified, dishing out good and bad luck to those who deserve it, and because of that, they're big fans of impartiality. As in, don't fall for the normal people. Which, as far as this girl is concerned, is definitely a rule that was made to be broken.

Kelsey's falling for a boy no one else can see... and he might be dangerous.

You can grab Demons Don't Love right now - and preorder Demons Don't Forgive (due out 26 Nov).

These books are part of a new trilogy, with part 3 expected to follow in December.

This series focuses on Kelsey, a normal girl who happens to have caught the eye of a demon, and Sasha, a spiritual healer whose job it is to protect the world from demons - although, with her mother's passing, she never really got to finish her training.

Hope you like it :)

You can grab your copy here. Ebook and KU as of today, paperback to follow.

Melanie Cooper is in charge of her world - just not in the way she wanted to be. With the rest of her royal bloodline in stasis, it's up to her to find a cure to the deadly curse they're under. But Ava, the shapeshifting enemy who cast the curse, isn't letting up.
Melanie's people, her life and her Council are all in danger, and Melanie doesn't know how to fix it. And Ava's next move might just change everything.

I am releasing this almost exactly five years after the first Innocence Cooper book, and this will likely be the last book featuring any of those characters. So just for fun, there are some surprise visits from some characters you might not have expected to see ;)

In other news, I should have a new trilogy out by the end of the year - the first book of which is called Demons Don't Love, so keep your eyes out for that in the next couple of months.