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As promised, I’m importing the A Court of Thorns and Roses recaps here from Patreon. These were originally written beginning in August of 2020, so there will be references to upcoming or seasonal events that won’t fit with our current timeline. I am not a time traveler and you’ll never be able to prove that I am. I will also include editors notes like this every now and then as we go, mostly to amuse myself but to give re-read value to those who’ve already been on this awful, awful journey with me.

It’s release day for The Ogre’s Fairytale Bride on Patreon, Ream, and Kindle Vella!

I have some pretty amazing news about Fablemere, the series that begins with The Ogre’s Fairytale Bride, but I’m going to leave that until after the excerpt:

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The book was shockingly heavy, and its brown leather cover was in much better shape than most of the stock. She ran her fingers across the embossed letters on the spine.

“Fablemere,” she read aloud. Maybe it’s Latin for something.

She opened it and found thick parchment pages. It appeared to be handwritten, complete with odd drawings in the margins. It couldn’t possibly be a true medieval manuscript. Not in a place that sold bulk back-dated issues of Popular Mechanics.

She carefully turned a couple of pages, until she got confirmation. It wasn’t a priceless manuscript. There was a full-page photo of…

Grass.

A close-up of grass.

That was odd.

Odder still, the longer she looked at the grass, the more she didn’t want to look away or turn the page. Something about it was utterly fascinating.

And as she watched, a small yellow beetle tottered across the photo.

She flicked it aside.

And felt the grass.

“What the—” She moved to slam the book closed. Only… there wasn’t a book. Her hands were splayed on the ground. The yellow beetle trundled over her fingers.

She sat up. Took a gasp of clean, fresh air.

No dust. No mildew.

No bookshop.

She blinked up at a gray, cold sky, marked by a rapidly closing scar, through which she could see the flickering fluorescent light above the sales counter.

“No.” She stumbled to her feet, waving her arms as the seam crept closed. “No!”

And then it was gone.

No, no, no. This is not happening.

What “it” was, she had no idea. But it was happening.

Vanessa felt the side of her head. Then the top. Then the back and the other side. Nothing hurt. No head injury.

Unless I’m in a coma. Yup. That made the most sense. She’d probably been crushed under a bookcase and now she was in the hospital, hallucinating the grassy hillside she kneeled on, and the line of trees at the bottom.

And the looming black mountains far off in the distance.

She sat back on her heels and tried to think of a way to test herself. There had to be a way to tell if this was a hallucination. What was the point of watching all that Grey’s Anatomy if she hadn’t learned something about comas?

“Fuck, how did they wake up Really Old Guy?” She pulled up a tuft of grass. It didn’t transform into a handful of butterflies or cotton candy. She counted fourteen pieces, closed her hand, opened it, and counted again. “Fourteen.”

Maybe that wasn’t a real test. She pulled the strap of her bag over her shoulder.

“Aha!” She jerked the zipper open. “If I were hallucinating,” she said aloud to the absolutely no one around her, “I probably wouldn’t hallucinate—” 

A used tissue.

Her head swam. She dug around frantically in the bag. A tube of lip balm. Her prescription bottle. She held it up, praying the label would be nothing but indecipherable squiggles or big, black text reading YOU’RE IN A COMA.

It said: TAKE 2 TABLETS BY MOUTH TWO TIMES A DAY lamoTRIgrine 100 MG TAB UNIC

Only a pharmacist could hallucinate that.

If she wasn’t in a coma… where the hell was she?

Something screeched. Like a pterodactyl would screech. She assumed. She’d never met one in person and she sure as fuck didn’t plan on it now.

Scrambling to her feet, she raced down the hill, her tennis shoes sliding on the damp grass. It had rained recently. That was the smell in the air.

It hadn’t rained in days back home.

Nope, not thinking stuff like “back home,” she scolded herself. As far as she was concerned, she was in intensive care, having a very dangerous sleep.

Running from the potential pterodactyl was just a precaution.

The shrieking call split the sky again, sending out vibrations that slammed through the air and tossed Vanessa to the ground. She rolled, flipped, rolled again, and came to rest with a dull thud against something solid and furry. And very, very dead.

She scrambled back from the carcass of a huge, ghost-white deer. A foot to the left, and she would have been impaled on its antlers. Its milky blue eyes stared sightless at the sky, and darkened blood stained its snowy coat.

Once, Vanessa had ridden her bike past a puddle with a dead squirrel floating in it. The deer smelled similar, but so much worse.

The pummeling cry filled the air again, closer now, though Vanessa wasn’t sure how she knew that. Some instinct inside her, she guessed, that wanted her to get up and keep running for the trees. She pushed herself to her feet and moved faster than she ever had in her entire life, faster, even than when she’d wanted so badly to beat Mandy Fink at the five hundred meter during sophomore year.

It had been a long time and a hundred or so pounds since high school, though. Her lungs burned, and more lactic acid pumped through her muscles than oxygen. Eventually, she would have to stop and take her chances with the pterodactyl.

Stop saying it’s a pterodactyl!

The grass got deeper as she reached the bottom of the hill, and the ground got softer. The grass turned to moss, and the moss slipped away from the dirt beneath it like the skin off a blister. She almost lost her footing when the next ear-shattering screech sounded. The flap of enormous wings stirred wind across her face. Just a few more steps and she’d make it beneath the shelter of the trees, if she could even consider them shelter. The wings made another pass overhead, casting a huge shadow over the ground, and Vanessa made the split-second decision to throw herself bodily into the woods.

And directly into some nasty thorns.

She yelped as the vines scratched her face and arms, and she tried to push and kick her way free, but only succeeded in poking herself more. They tore at her hair, at her arms, and for a moment, she thought she should have chosen death by pterodactyl. But whatever had been screaming and flying was gone now. She took a few deep breaths and worked at extricating herself from the brambles.

Freeing herself ended up drawing more blood, and there were some thorns that had broken off in her skin, but she had her chin hair tweezers in her purse and plenty of hand sanitizer. I’ve got this.

Whatever this was.

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You can read new chapters of The Ogre’s Fairytale Bride every Tuesday an Thursday on Patreon, Ream, and Kindle Vella.

Now, do you want to hear the news? Shortly after I announced The Ogre’s Fairytale Bride and the concept of Fablemere as a setting for fantasy stories in different genres and formats, I got an offer for another fantasy romance, also set in Fablemere! I can’t give any details until the ink dries and I’m allowed to say with who and when, but while The Ogre’s Fairytale Bride posts, I’ll be hard at work on a deeply, deeply spicy Cinderella retelling…with fairies.

This is the first time I’ve ever had an offer on a related property before the first one even came out, so I feel like a superstar, especially considering it’s something I’ve built from the ground up. I hope everybody enjoys the world of Fablemere, because it looks like I’m going to be living there for a very, very long time.

Just a heads up that sign-up for my new Patreon tier and my Ream page are live in advance of this Thursday’s premiere of The Ogre’s Fairytale Bride.

As promised, I’m importing the A Court of Thorns and Roses recaps here from Patreon. These were originally written beginning in August of 2020, so there will be references to upcoming or seasonal events that won’t fit with our current timeline. I am not a time traveler and you’ll never be able to prove that I am. I will also include editors notes like this every now and then as we go, mostly to amuse myself but to give re-read value to those who’ve already been on this awful, awful journey with me.

Just a heads up that sign-up for my new Patreon tier and my Ream page are live in advance of this Thursday’s premiere of The Ogre’s Fairytale Bride.

As promised, I’m importing the A Court of Thorns and Roses recaps here from Patreon. These were originally written beginning in August of 2020, so there will be references to upcoming or seasonal events that won’t fit with our current timeline. I am not a time traveler and you’ll never be able to prove that I am. I will also include editors notes like this every now and then as we go, mostly to amuse myself but to give re-read value to those who’ve already been on this awful, awful journey with me.

With every chapter of this book, I have to sit back and go, is this really a bad chapter/bad writing, or is your judgment clouded by the chapters you’ve already read. But now that we’re up to seventeen chapters, I really do feel like, okay, seventeen chapters is seventeen chances for me to be fair.

And this book has used those gracious chances up.

After this, the gloves are coming off.

Hey friends! TODAY you can sign up for Ream or the new Patreon tier in time to read the first five chapters of THE OGRE’S FAIRYTALE BRIDE on Thursday, October 5th. It will also be available on Kindle Vella, but Ream and Patreon subscribers will also receive benefits like maps and occasional art and illustrations.

Click here to sign up for Ream
Click here to sign up for the new Patreon tier (existing Patrons can just edit their pledges)

As promised, I’m importing the A Court of Thorns and Roses recaps here from Patreon. These were originally written beginning in August of 2020, so there will be references to upcoming or seasonal events that won’t fit with our current timeline. I am not a time traveler and you’ll never be able to prove that I am. I will also include editors notes like this every now and then as we go, mostly to amuse myself but to give re-read value to those who’ve already been on this awful, awful journey with me.

As promised, I’m importing the A Court of Thorns and Roses recaps here from Patreon. These were originally written beginning in August of 2020, so there will be references to upcoming or seasonal events that won’t fit with our current timeline. I am not a time traveler and you’ll never be able to prove that I am. I will also include editors notes like this every now and then as we go, mostly to amuse myself but to give re-read value to those who’ve already been on this awful, awful journey with me.

At the end of the last chapter, I predicted that there would be something racist happening in the next chapter.

AND I WAS CORRECT.

Let’s do this the TL;DR way first, and if you have further questions, you can read on.

• Abigail Barnette is writing Fantasy Romance now
• It’s a brand new, interconnected series of stories with varying spice and plot scope, all set in a fantasy world called Fablemere.
• It’s starting out in serial format and the first book will be in paperback and e-book next year
• You can read the five chapter premiere on Ream, Patreon, or Kindle Vella on October 5
• New chapters will post every Tuesday and Thursday. (But no faster than that, because this is meticulously timed).
• You’ll be able to sign up for Ream and the new Patreon tier (both $3 USD per month) on October 1
• The first book is The Ogre’s Fairytale Bride. The protagonist is a fat, non-binary, over-forty human with epilepsy. BECAUSE I’VE EARNED THIS.
• The cover looks like this:

I’ve been busy for the past six or so months developing this project: writing, map-making, outlining seven books, watching nonstop fantasy movies from my childhood, and developing a business and release plan that will get this book in front of as many eyeballs as possible. This system will allow me to attract new Abigail Barnette readers, broaden my revenue stream, and serve readers multiple formats to choose from.

So… what the hell is Fablemere?

Fablemere is the fantasy world of our fairy tales, a setting with limitless potential for anything from monster romance to cozy fantasy love stories. Every story will be set in the world of Fablemere, featuring new characters and settings for readers to explore, each informed by today’s most popular fantasy romance tropes.

And, of course, all the scorching sex that Abigail Barnette is known for.

The first book, The Ogre’s Fairytale Bride, introduces us to the world of Fablemere through the eyes of Vanessa, a forty-something non-binary human who accidentally falls through the pages of an enchanted book. When she’s captured by ogres, her epilepsy is mistaken for a supernatural gift—one that the ruthless vampire, Baron Aerrax Scylas, would pay handsomely to exploit.

Vanessa finds a protector in Droguk, a gruff and grumpy ogre who’s just trying to support his widowed sister and two nieces and has no time for a human making outlandish claims about magical books. Although Vanessa and Droguk start out repulsed by each other, a grudging friendship eventually blossoms into an attraction they both struggle to deny. With her supply of crucial medication running out, they undertake a dangerous journey to save her life…and escape the Baron’s relentless pursuit.

If you enjoyed The 10th Kingdom, Labyrinth, Legends & Lattes, Once Upon A Time, or Bound to the Battle God, or you’ve just always wished that Inkheart and The Never-Ending Story were geared towards adults with filthy minds, you’re going to love the stories I have planned for Fablemere.*

*I wanted to add, “If you’ve ever jerked off to Fern Gully” to that list, but I thought better of it. Until I typed that just now.

As promised, I’m importing the A Court of Thorns and Roses recaps here from Patreon. These were originally written beginning in August of 2020, so there will be references to upcoming or seasonal events that won’t fit with our current timeline. I am not a time traveler and you’ll never be able to prove that I am. I will also include editors notes like this every now and then as we go, mostly to amuse myself but to give re-read value to those who’ve already been on this awful, awful journey with me.

You know that feeling when we’re reading this book and we’re like, damn, this could have been good? This is a whole chapter of that. Prepare yourself.

As promised, I’m importing the A Court of Thorns and Roses recaps here from Patreon. These were originally written beginning in August of 2020, so there will be references to upcoming or seasonal events that won’t fit with our current timeline. I am not a time traveler and you’ll never be able to prove that I am. I will also include editors notes like this every now and then as we go, mostly to amuse myself but to give re-read value to those who’ve already been on this awful, awful journey with me.

Okay. We gotta do this. We gotta rehash the last line of chapter twelve before we move forward because I read both chapters back-to-back in the same night and I laughed. Like, out loud. At a book.

That hardly ever happens.

The chapter hook was: