Readers who enter THE DARK WOODS enter the shadows of fairy tales and folklore: the place where the darkest origins of the tales lie hidden. There are as many monsters as there are magic spells; as many unhappy obstacles and tragic fates as there are fortunes and crowns to be had. Light and darkness are engaged in a constant battle ... and in the shades of grey cast between them exist characters who are more than merely 'charming' or 'lovely.'
Beginning in 2012 with a critically-acclaimed retelling of Snow White in the novel FIRST BITE, more tales followed ... and other book series as well. From Faenwick the bitterly conflicted faerie with a weakness for saving humans to the hardened, silent legendary hunter of witches Neel -- and, in between, a handsome prince who isn't either, a Cinderella whose stepmother is more than just a little cruel, and a sleeping beauty whose fate is determined by witches, fairies, prophecy, and a time-traveling writer.
And we've loved every chapter of it we've written (well, mostly, anyway).
Although the reissued Dark Woods series now lists it as the third book, First Bite was the beginning, and our first time to venture into the world of fairytales and folklore. Of course, there have been many significant changes to The Dark Woods since that first novel. What started as a simple trilogy quickly evolved into a full-blown series, with both classic and original fairytale stories told with a dark twist, and led to the initial two spinoff series in 2016. This was followed by the release of the first annotated edition, filled with authors' commentary that clues you in on how -- and why -- we created these series.
Then came the decision to reboot all three series in 2017, which is when new cover art was rolled out (both print and digital artwork), and the author pen names were changed. The new pen names were 'inside jokey' as a lot of fans know, with 'G.B.' for the Grimm Brothers, 'Anders' and 'Christian' for the second most-famous fairytale writer of all time, and 'Hawthorne'— of course —for our own fairytale writer in Thorns.
The completed overhaul for The Dark Woods included the website (we retired the
original blog art from the front page), as well as all-new Twitter and Facebook art. But the books themselves are the same ones our fans came to know and love from the very beginning.
We invite all of you to join us for future ones, the dark roots of everyone's favorites stories.
