Tag: Fairytale

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.

Finished a book

Hope ZaneGeneral

Here to lie flat facedown on the floor because I finished a book, hallelujah.

It occurs to me that when I say that, I have to specify reading or writing or else people get confused. But yesterday I finally glued my ass to the chair and finished writing Fairytale.

I don’t know why endings are so hard for me— or well, I guess I do. I tend to second-guess myself a lot when it comes to endings. I don’t have a lot of confidence for being able to land the plane well, which leads to a lot of planes in suspended animation, just sort of hovering until they fall out of the sky.

Which is to say, I realized I’ve developed a very bad habit of getting 40k-80k words into projects before jumping ship and abandoning them for shiny new WIPs. I’m trying to stop doing that because where at first I thought it was a manifestation of different interests, now I mostly think it’s a manifestation of fear.

The end is usually pretty close whenever I decide to jump ship. Maybe it’s just hard to make decisions. Saying yes to one fork in the road means saying no to all the others, and the closing of possibilities can seem scary—but it doesn’t have to, right?

This is just a stray thought that I’m marinating on, but I think I’d like to do some kind of personal challenge for the year. Maybe I can call 2024 The Year of Endings if that doesn’t sound too horrifyingly ominous. I’d like to make my peace with endings. Maybe I’ll try to finish as many things as I can. Sounds kind of uncomfortable. I better get some gold stars for this. (Literally, I’m going to buy stickers. I’ve had some galaxy-themed star stickers in my Amazon cart for ages now.)

Because it’s not just fear of choosing the wrong ending, I think. I avoid endings even when I’m reading, even when I’m watching things. There’s just something in me that squirms away from a certain kind of emotional discomfort, and I’m really so sensitive when it comes to fiction. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, but I do think I want to get a little better at holding my hand to the fire. I want to know how things end. I want to stop keeping myself away from things I love because of some inchoate fear.

Anyway! I felt guilty for not writing today for all of a hot second, but since I just finished writing a novel yesterday, I think I actually deserve a break. On the subject of endings, I picked back up a danmei I had paused in reading, Evil as Humans, which I’m really liking and I’m about halfway through. I’ve been reading it all morning, and I have a small pot of jook simmering on the stove.

I think I feel pretty good today. Kind of hopeful. Maybe I’ll do a little bit of sketching later.

There are still some extras I want to write for Fairytale, but I think I will save that thought to percolate for another day.

With a sickness

Hope ZaneGeneral

It’s been a hell of a year so far. I started 2024, like I’m sure everyone did, with the best of intentions of Getting Shit Done. Instead, I mostly got very sick and spent the last two weeks resting and trying to feel a little less like death.

Fortunately, I think I’m starting to feel better now, but getting back to normal has still been a slow and careful crawl.

Onto publishing news, I started posting my WIPs on Patreon, and I think I’ll continue for the foreseeable future. The format might change as I figure out what works for me and for my readers, but I really like the idea of letting people read along as I go.

Since I was feeling a little better today, I finished uploading the last few chapters of Fairytale, bringing the Patreon up to date and the total chapter count up to 30. The first four chapters are free for anyone who’d like to check them out.

This story started as a little whim that grew and grew. I didn’t have any intention of turning it into a full-length book when I started, but before I knew it, I’d looked up and 3 months had passed, and I’d written almost 100k words. Charis and Mouse now have a special place in my heart next to all my other characters. I hope you’ll grow to love them, too.


Signing up for $5/month will give you access to extras and WIPs where you can read along with stories in The Witchblood Heir verse and more as I write them.