Alethea Kontis is joining us today to talk about her novel, Thieftess. Here’s the publisher’s description:

Thursday’s child has far to go…

Pirate Queen Thursday Woodcutter (aka “Captain Cutter”) and her infamous brother Jack left Arilland after their little sister’s magical ocean fiasco to reunite with the crew of the Sea Hag. But what they find on the way is grim: the Troll King is on a rampage, the Dragon of the North is terrorizing the Permafrost, and the Pirate King has disappeared.

Determined to find her husband, Thursday travels the world on an enchanted ship crafted by her father and brother. Tracking down the Pirate King presents Thursday with one giant hurdle after another. And when faced with a choice-saving the world or saving the person she loves-Thursday realizes that it’s not really a choice at all.

Thieftess is heavily influenced by the fairy tales “The Story of the Seven Simons,” “The Flying Ship,” and “East of the Sun, West of the Moon.” Thursday’s adventures on the high seas are chock full of unlikely friendships, found family, and, of course, true love.

From dragons and unicorns to bloodthirsty sirens and murderous trolls, fans of Arilland will be delighted to find that it’s banter and booty and business as usual in this long-awaited follow-up to the Woodcutter Sisters saga!

What’s Alethea’s favorite bit?

The Woodcutter Sisters are back, baby!

Are you excited? I know I am. I better be.

I had to essentially tank my own career in order to make this happen.

In 2014, my publisher went through a major reorg and my famous seven-book fairy tale novel series about sisters all named after the days of the week was orphaned after Book 3.

I started writing Thieftess—the adventures of Thursday Woodcutter, Pirate Queen—in 2015.

But I quickly learned that there was no point in continuing the series if I didn’t have control over the first three books. And if I continued writing anything even remotely related to the series, then those first three books would keep selling.

 So I had to stop.

I discontinued my Princess Alethea’s Fairy Tale Rants series on YouTube. I couldn’t even think about fairy tales. I had to write anything but YA fantasy. And somehow I had to survive.

Somehow, I did. I’m not entirely sure how, but I did. I wrote short stories for anthologies. I wrote book reviews for NPR. I narrated podcasts. I stopped going to conventions. I had a bit of an agent…adventure. My beautiful multiple award-winning audiobook narrator died. My beautiful NPR editor died.

Every time I thought I’d gotten that boulder up the hill, it slipped back down again.

My last short novel—the Scribe Award winning Besphinxed—released in 2018. I’ve written 5 full-length novels since then. A couple of short novels. About a dozen picture books. Probably more.

This will be the first to see the light of day.

At the end of 2023, I finally got the rights back to the first three Woodcutter Sisters. I spent the next year rebranding, repackaging, and re-releasing those all under my own imprint. And I was 100% ready to put out all those other unpublished manuscripts myself when my dear friend Carter Hasegawa suddenly became an agent. My agent.

“Cool,” I said as I handed Carter thirteen unpublished manuscripts. “You have fun with these. I have a pirate queen to write!”

That book—this book—should have taken me a few months to complete. It took me two and a half years. I cried the day Thieftess was finally finished, 11 years after I started.

Carter still hasn’t sold any of those manuscripts.

Yeah, I get it. Traditional publishing is a slow business. Slow enough to bleed to death from paper cuts. This is certainly not my first rodeo. But if you vanish from the scene as long as I did, you wonder if people have forgotten you. You wonder if you have forgotten yourself.

*cue Simple Minds*

It’s humbling when you realize it’s much more the second one than it is the first.

Hello again, world.

I’m back!

LINKS:

Book Link*

Website

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BIO:

Alethea Kontis is a New York Times bestselling author, storm chaser, Saturday Songwriter, and granddaughter of a pirate. She has received the Scribe Award, the Garden State Teen Book Award, and is a two-time winner of the Gelett Burgess Children’s Book Award. She was twice nominated for both the Andre Norton Nebula Award and Dragon Award. Alethea narrates stories for multiple online magazines and does freelance work for Writing the Other. Born in Vermont, Alethea currently resides on the Space Coast of Florida where she watches K-dramas with her teddy bear, Charlie. Together they are ARMY, VVS, and Black Roses.

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