VS Note: Our family is fortunate to have two published authors – my daughter Eli Donovan was traditionally published several years before I was! She’s got a fabulous Kickstarter going for her Fairy Tales of Lyond Special Edition and today she’s sharing what led her to write these tales.
Eli: Nearly twenty years ago, I finished the first book in what would become the Fairy Tales of Lyond series, The Beauty’s Beast. And it happened almost by accident.
At the time, I was in college and I’d been assigned the medieval werewolf poem Bisclavret. I also had a medieval-set movie playing in the background as I did my homework. Knights riding wildly through forests, steel flashing, arrows flying. Somewhere in my head, Bisclavret and those cinematic images collided.
I dropped my homework, grabbed the nearest empty notebook, and wrote what would eventually become the opening scene of The Beauty’s Beast. Without quite deciding to do so, I found myself writing a novel. And, as I wrote, I fell completely in love with my bookish heroine Kathryn and her beloved Gabriel. What began as homework became a world, and one I couldn’t stop thinking about.
In 2010, this novel was released the novel as my first published book. Digital publishing was still finding its footing, but the response surprised me. Without marketing budgets or bookstore tables, The Beauty’s Beast quietly found readers and, more importantly, it’s kept finding them all along.
I never planned to write a sequel. But messages kept arriving from readers who wanted more: more of the world, more of the characters, more of the stories that felt unfinished.
Eventually, two new ideas took hold. One became a prequel about how the king and queen of Lyond first met. The other followed a villain from the original novel on a path toward redemption. Those stories became Enchanting the King and The Changeling Child. I wrote and published both while pregnant with my first child, during a season when time was scarce and life was shifting fast. I assumed that chapter of my creative life was closing.
But then two characters from Enchanting the King—a queen’s handmaiden named Violette and one of the king’s men, Ned—refused to let me go. They sparked every time they shared a scene. I knew they belonged together. A few years later, their story became The Apprentice Sorceress (and Ned became one of my favorite heroes I’ve ever written).
Somehow, Lyond never really let me go.
For nearly two decades, I’ve lived with these characters in my head. Now, I’ve finally had the opportunity to gather their stories together in one place and return to Lyond in a new way, inviting both longtime readers and newcomers to step fully into the world that began with a college assignment and grew into something much bigger.
If you love fairy tales with some bite, witty banter, found family, and character-driven stories that linger, I’d love for you to join me. I’m currently bringing a special edition Fairy Tales of Lyond omnibus to life through Kickstarter. It’s a preorder-style campaign for a beautifully crafted volume with foiled details, medieval-inspired endpapers, sprayed edges, and full-color illustrations for every story. The omnibus format allows these tales to be experienced together as they were always meant to be.
Lyond has been waiting a long time. I hope you’ll come visit.
Excerpt from Enchanting the King, book two in The Fairy Tales of Lyond omnibus. A neglected princess. A defeated king. They should be enemies, but a forbidden desire sparks the moment they meet. King Thomas and Princess Alienor have retreated into a shepherd’s hut to wait out a rainstorm.
“We’ll linger here,” King Thomas said, “see if we can wait out the rain.”
“All right.” Aliénor took off his heavy cloak and laid it out on the straw to dry. She lifted one of the musty, but delightfully dry, blankets off the floor of the hut and wrapped it around her shoulders instead. Her skirt was still soaked and heavy with mud, but her shoulders and chest were instantly warmer. She cast a glance over at the king, watching as his muscles quivered and twitched with the cold. “What if I were to close my eyes, King Thomas? Then you could take that drenched tunic off at least, and wrap up in one of these dry blankets.”
He cast a mischievous glance her way from under his lashes. “No peeking.”
“I would never.” She grinned at him and held her hands up before her eyes like a child.
He laughed, and she heard the sounds of wet cloth slapping against the ground. Something tugged under her hip, upsetting her balance, and she accidentally opened her eyes and looked up at him.
The blanket he’d chosen had had a corner resting under her hip that he hadn’t noticed. “Beg pardon.” He dropped the cloth at once. For a moment his arms bobbed up in the air as if he were unsure whether to cover his chest or brazen out this moment.
Aliénor could be no help to him—she could only stare. He had a marvelous body, a soldier’s body, tall and strong, with broad shoulders and tightly corded muscles in his arms. Something uncurled in her gut, a small feeling almost like the vibration of a cat’s purr. Mmmmm. She bit her lower lip to keep a laugh back and finally tore her gaze away from him. Shifting uncomfortably, wobbling her hips back and forth, she tugged the edge of the blanket out from under her bottom and blindly tossed it toward him.
“Thank you.” He wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and collapsed into the straw beside her.
He sat as far away as he could in the little hut, and yet Aliénor felt his presence with an almost throbbing intensity, as if every beat of her heart came from his body. She felt over-hot and all tingly along her arms and chest with a heady kind of anticipation.
Perhaps if the threat of her normal world had seemed more real, Aliénor could have controlled herself better—kept her distance, kept to what was proper and expected. But she had stared death straight in the eye so many times, and that black terror seemed to stalk her now each night in the darkness.
Hard to care what tomorrow might bring. Hard to tell herself no when every moment felt like the edge of a precipice. Each second felt precious now, finite. She didn’t want to waste them in gray mourning for her bitter past with Philippe or this dark fear of the unknown. She wanted to coax high that kindling warmth she felt whenever she was with Thomas. If her life was to gutter out like a flickering flame, then she wanted to burn now like a lightning strike, like a falling star.
She tucked herself deeper into her blanket, hunching into its warmth. “Will you think me presumptuous if I ask something, King Thomas?”
“No.”
“Were—were you happy in your marriage?”
“Very.” His voice was rough. “For the little time we had.”
“Was she?”
“I think so. I hope so.”
“With one successful marriage to your credit, why did you never marry again?”
He shifted on the rock, and the edge of his blanket fell across Aliénor’s lap. He didn’t notice. “I never…there’s never been anyone who made me feel the way Rosamund did.” His gaze flicked toward her, and their eyes caught. Until you.
Aliénor hissed in a startled breath, her pulse thundering. He had not said the words, and yet the tender warmth in his eyes said everything for him anyway, whether he meant it to or not. He looked away again, but she had seen, indeed she had felt those unspoken words deep inside. She studied the line of his cheekbone, the soft curve of his mouth. I’ve never felt this way about anyone. Her tongue felt heavy with the words, but she swallowed them and said nothing.
VS Note: Here’s the Kickstarter link. – there are chibis and extra stories and ebooks and all kinds of rewards besides the Special Edition omnibus! It fully funded right away but there are other goals to unlock…
Author bio:
Eli Donovan lives in Southern California with her husband, kids, and a collection of vintage dinosaur toys that is absolutely not out of control (probably). You can find her at www.elidonovan.wordpress.com, on Instagram @elidonovanwriter, and on BlueSky at elidonovanwriter.bsky.social