Happy Pride Month from Author, Eddie, and Nuisance from The Spider Prince Trilogy!
In Fairy Hill, Alberta, Canada… it’s easy to get cursed.
When her oldest friend, Eddie Karpinski, is transformed into a spider by a group of vindictive fae, Author Wilshire sets out in search of the Spider Prince to barter for a cure. Reuniting with her long lost friend, a faerie she calls Nuisance, is just a nice bonus. But there’s more at stake than just Eddie’s life, and there’s more magic at work than Author is prepared to face alone. Curses are complicated, and so are relationships with the fae. Even comatose ones, like the Spider Prince.
snippet from BODYSHARE, my new book coming out 8OCT2024 :) image description below the cut!
ID: black text on a white background reads:
“When he was nine, he had to get stitches.
He’d ridden his bike down a sharp hill and crashed into a tree and disturbed half the neighborhood with his screaming, especially once his cousin—only two, at the time—had caught sight of the blood joined in the wailing. The doctors had called him brave after they were finished with him, patting his shoulder affectionately before they turned to his ma to give her care information. The stitches were supposed to dissolve, but they didn’t, not entirely, so per their instruction, she sat him down on the toilet under the medicine cabinet and eased the string out of his leg. He’d felt the thread drag along the underside of his skin, like an itch somewhere that shouldn’t itch. He’d shivered and gone tense, the sensation unfamiliar and unsettling. Later, he’d learn about nerve endings and wonder why there were any on the wrong side of his skin.
Now, he’s becoming intimately familiar with the way that it’s not just the underside of his skin that can experience strange sensations. The devil loops around his organs and his bones, moves with his blood vessels and through his respiratory system. His body doesn’t seem to know how to read the signals. He doesn’t think humans are built to be touched from the inside out.”
Text ends.
The sentences “When he was nine, he had to get stitches.”, “He’d felt the thread drag along the underside of his skin, like an itch somewhere that shouldn’t itch.”, “Later, he’d learn about nerve endings and wonder why there were any on the wrong side of his skin.”, “The devil loops around his organs and his bones, moves with his blood vessels and through his respiratory system.”, and “He doesn’t think humans are built to be touched from the inside out.” are all highlighted in various shades of burnt orange. END ID.
BODYSHARE is a fantasy novella about Luke Milton, a recent college graduate and divorcee who makes a deal with the devil: in exchange for success in his musical career, he agrees to share his body.
BODYSHARE comes out in October, and the author (me!) is currently looking for ARC readers! If you’d be interested in receiving a digital ARC, you can APPLY HERE.
Here’s the full summary:
Luke Milton made a deal with the devil. Now, he's getting everything he ever wanted: musical opportunities, charting albums, world tours, and a thriving fanbase. The only cost? His body, which he now shares with the devil itself as it goes about its mysterious business. All in all, the tradeoff isn't too bad. He's also always wanted an intimate connection.
After both his college diploma and his divorce papers are signed, twenty-two-year-old Luke Milton is approached by the devil—an energetic force that's been present in one way or another for his whole life—who lauds him with praise for his musical skill and insists that it could help him further his career. When initial reviews of his EP are shaky, it doesn't take long before Luke is agreeing, even though the terms of the deal require him making space in his body for the devil the share.
Luke's career develops rapidly, and so does his relationship with the devil. As they work together through album releases and world tours, they become further and further intertwined, and Luke has to wonder if it's worth it.
[ID: The cover for the book BODYSHARE by Leandra Inglis. The cover is made to look like a music player, with album art, a track title, an artists name, a progress bar, and play/skip buttons. The album art features a burning polaroid picture of a boy with a guitar on a red background. The word “BODYSHARE” is written across the top. Where the track title and artists name would go, instead it reads Bodyshare - Leandra Inglis. END ID]
In the hidden, magical town of Fairy Hill (Alberta, Canada) it’s easy to get a curse and difficult to break one. Author Wilshire, Edna Koch and Eddie Karpinski are all painfully aware of this truth. As they navigate young adulthood, they’re forced to deal with complicated curses, faerie fealty, enigmatic enemies, and misunderstood magic.
Alongside their friends, Nuisance, Pan, Darling, and the Spider Prince, the human trio embark on a journey of friendship, sacrifice, and love.
Faeries! Witches! Girls with swords! Queer characters & themes! Found family! Support an indie author!
The Spider Prince Trilogy by Leandra Inglis - all three books available NOW!!
Official character art for the main characters from The Spider Prince Trilogy, brought to life by nikcandoart (twitter, instagram)
Following Author Wilshire, Edna Koch, and Eddie Karpinski as the three humans from Fairy Hill, Alberta, Canada make their way through faerie realms in search of curse cures, this story revolves around friendship, love, and making one’s own way.
CHAOS AND THE SPIDER PRINCE: When Author Wilshire’s oldest friend, Eddie, is attacked by the Wild Hunt and transformed into a spider, Author must travel to Lockswood to reconnect with an old friend and plead for the help of the Spider Prince. It might have worked, if only the Spider Prince weren’t cursed as well.
THE WITCH HAZEL TREE: Edna Koch has been cursed since birth to only speak in questions, which keeps her cut off from experiencing the full joy of her magic. When another witch offers to help her, she isn’t expecting being roped into faerie politics and an anxiety-inducing romance. Good thing she has friends in Author and Eddie, who will drop anything to come help her.
SPIDER SPIDER BEE: There’s a faerie in Eddie Karpinski’s room, and he’s claiming that they’re friends. With little memory of the faerie world, and none of the events that this strange faerie boy keeps describing, Eddie agrees to help search for a missing human girl, but does not agree to make it a smooth process. Even Edna’s insistence that everything is true doesn’t change Eddie’s mindset, but maybe more time amongst the fae and magic will.
The Spider Prince trilogy is available NOW!
[ID: A series of five images, depicting five different characters from the Spider Prince Trilogy. In order they are: Author Wilshire (a square jawed white woman with chesnut brown hair in pigtails and a yellow denim jacket, wearing gold earrings and bells in her hair), The Spider Prince (a faerie with skin the colour of spider silk, pointed ears, eight black eyes, and black hair, wearing a golden circlet and a brown capelet), Nuisance (a faerie with warn brown skin, pointed ears, black hair, and honey coloured eyes, wearing a black capelet and golden jewellery), Eddie Karpinski (a Black person with short black hair and gold wire-frame glasses, wearing bell earrings and a red flannel), and Edna Koch (a blonde and blue-eyed white woman with her hair in a braid crown, a white dress, and earrings shaped like autumn leaves). All drawings are from the shoulders up. END ID.]
some excerpts from CHAOS AND THE SPIDER PRINCE, the first book of the Spider Prince trilogy 🕷️🍃
image IDs below the cut! link in rbs :]
ID: three photos of black text on a white background.
the first reads: “She only has to ask for assistance once, when she’s not sure which bus to get on at the second changeover. The girl at the station tells her that Lockswood is ‘almost suspiciously’ easy to get to but that the residents never seem to like people from out-of-town. In Fairy Hill, which Author isn’t entirely sure is possible to find without specific directions, it’s the fae who tend to dislike out-of-towners. Those Unseelie like to keep to themselves. Author suspects that the Courts of Lockswood enjoy having visitors and the humans are attempting to protect them. It makes a creeping nervousness climb up her spine but, well, her oldest friend is in a jar in her backpack. She’s got bigger worries.
The final bus runs straight to Lockswood. It’s infrequent, according to the schedule, but Author has a stroke of good luck because it’s precisely two minutes after she sits down that the bus pulls up. Honestly, she feels like she’s earned it because, of course, her oldest friend is currently a spider in a jar in her backpack. Her brain still can’t quite process it. She feels a bit like a broken record.
She gets on the bus.”
the second reads: “Author leans against him, shoulder to shoulder, and lets out a long sigh. “Look at us, eh? A spider and a Spider Prince. What are the odds?”
It makes them both laugh, even if it’s tinged bitter.
There’re lots of things that she’d like to say to Nuisance: she’d like to tease him about ageing despite the distance between them, she’d like to ask him what he liked about Eddie, she’d like to tell him about the other troubles in Fairy Hill. The words get caught in her throat when she opens her mouth, so instead they sit a while in silence.”
the third reads: “She wishes she’d written down her mother’s phone number so she could call to ask. There’s got to be a payphone in Lockswood town, right? Darling could’ve taken her to it and she could’ve called home.
Of course, that would require admitting that her idea hadn’t worked out very well. She can picture the entire phone call in her mind’s eye. She’d call and her mother would go to the avocado green phone that neither of them particularly liked but that her grandmother had insisted on mounting to the wall. Author would say, do you guys have any ideas? And her mother would answer yes or no or maybe and then follow it up with your idea didn’t work, though, or you wouldn’t be calling. And Author would admit that her idea had been kind of stupid, actually, and that the Spider Prince is cursed too and then her mother would use her disappointed voice (the one that wasn’t supposed to sound disappointed but still did, the one that clawed at Author’s insides and always made her feel so overwhelmingly guilty, as if she isn’t guilty enough) and say, it wasn’t a bad idea. Author would know that it translated to ‘it wasn’t a good idea, either’ and then she’d start to cry and her mother would be forced to comfort her as though this whole situation wasn’t entirely her fault.
Oh, she thinks but doesn’t say out loud, I think I’m spiralling.”
