Author: Hope Zane

Sickness and Health

Hope ZaneGeneral

It’s been a really rough month and a half. First I caught covid, which led to a really scary asthma exacerbation, and now I’m dealing with some really exhausting side effects while adjusting to new medication. I’m not having a good time, guys.

Which I say just because… I want to say something. To let you know how I’m doing and not just disappear. I’d like it if it was something more positive and fun, but, well, this is where I’m at.

I’m trying my best and trying to be kind to myself in these times. Hopefully I’ll feel good about writing again soon. <3

The Fox and the Rose

Hope ZaneBook Release

I have a new book coming out in July. It’s one I’ve lived with for quite a while now—longer than I live with most stories before finishing them. I think I’ve been working on this for the better part of a year.

This book is my love letter to a lot of things—my love letter to research, for one. Also to danmei and Chinese culture. In a brief fit of shitposting combined with Trying to Figure Out How to Do Instagram, I made one of those silly little “trope maps.”

I suppose this post also functions as a cover reveal! If you’d like to check out the book and place a preorder, you can do both of those things here:

Preorder on Amazon

When she’s hungry, she looks for the garden

Hope ZaneGeneral

I love Annie Dillard. I love her writing, which seems to possess a kind of singular beauty. I’m once again thinking of this quote of hers and finding it at once bolstering and convicting:

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

– Annie Dillard

I confess I haven’t felt like much of a writer lately. My words have slowed down. I’ve been prioritizing other things. Life and health have become sometimes sad—maybe moreso than usual. This will pass, and yet it still seems hard.

Ah, I want to end this blog post triumphantly, but maybe it’s most honest to say that writing is still someplace I can go. That even when the light on the porch of my own creative practice seems dark and dim, it never goes out completely.

And there has to be something very hopeful in that.

New Book Release: Fairytale

Hope ZaneBook Release

Happy New Year! I’ve got a new book out, called Fairytale. It’s a slice of life m/m romance featuring a Kpop boy group. I’ve really loved spending time with Charis and the rest of Fairytale, and I hope you will, too.

Right now, you can purchase an eBook copy on Amazon and Smashwords. In the coming weeks, I’ll upload it to my eBook store on this website, and you’ll be able to find it at Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, and other eBook retailers as well. The paperback version is also coming soon!

Your charms thaw the Ice Prince…

The K-pop group Fairytale is living out their dreams. They made it to debut, and now their star is on the rise.

Charis is hailed as the beautiful Ice Prince of Fairytale, but he’s never been special. He’s here just to fill out the numbers. No matter how hard he works, he’ll only ever be second best. A pale imitation of talent.

Not like his teammate Mouse, an internet sensation who was famous even as a trainee. Bursting with talent and charisma, he’s the ace not only of Fairytale but of their entire company. Everyone loves Mouse, the uninhibited Dark Prince of Fairytale.

Between comebacks and contest shows, the members of Fairytale learn to support each other and lean on each other through accidents, rumors, and incidents. They work hard to prove their dreams and to answer the biggest question of all: Is it possible to find love after your happily ever after?

Fairytale is a standalone m/m novel. It is part of Modern Witchblood, a collection of books that take place in modern times several hundred years after the events of The Witchblood Heir series.

Thoughts and character ramblings

Hope ZaneWriting

Thinking about Charis since I just spent three months writing about him. He was simultaneously kind of peaceful and frustrating to write because he feels like he’s on the other side of some plexiglass from his own thoughts and feelings. Nice feels like that, too, to a lesser extent, but I think Nice is so much more chaotic and prone to acting out that it doesn’t feel so muffled in there. Like you can hear an echo.

They both end up supported by people who love them; I’m hesitant to use the word ‘found family’ because of the kind of aggressively Pure connotation it’s taken up in some parts of the internet. Plus, Nice ends up supported by family with no other qualifiers, considering he marries into it.

But I think the tenor of that support changes, too. Charis’ found family, in the form of his members, feels much more tight-knit and a bit more careful. I think Charis is very honestly surrounded by love, care, and support by his peers. Nice’s family doesn’t love him or each other any less—they very obviously love each other so fiercely—but I think they’re just as chaotic as he is, in their own ways.

They feel like… that big house of people scattering in different directions, and it makes sense. After all, they all have their own lives.