The Big Idea: Alethea Kontis

Posted on June 16, 2026    Posted by Athena Scalzi      9 Comments

Not all books fit the mold of the genre they’re in. For Alethea Kontis, she wanted to write romance without the explicit parts, wanted to write a YA book that wasn’t dumbed down for kids with no attention span and no literacy skills. Well, she did it, and she did it her way, in her newest novel, Thieftess.

ALETHEA KONTIS:

This post is for the smart kids. The rebels. My fellow goonies.

This essay marks my FIFTH time as a guest on The Big Idea—I am now a proud member of the Whatever Five-Timers Club! Please remind me to make sure John and Athena mail me my membership card.

The last time I was featured on Whatever was in 2017. The Before Times. An Age of Innocence. Social media was less commercial, Gen AI was a dream of the future, and the CDC’s playbook was positive the next great pandemic would be influenza. I went to conventions back then. I knew what K-pop was, but I didn’t know K-dramas existed. I didn’t speak any Korean, Portuguese, Croatian, or Arabic. I had never been to Asia or Africa. Storm chasers were other people, and the topic of a movie I loved once upon a time.

Back then, I wrote books that were publishable.

I joke because it’s both horrible and true. My books are too long. Too clever. Too smart. Too subtle. Too bloody. Set in the wrong time period. Set in a country where I wasn’t born. Contain protagonists who are the wrong age. Contain far too many difficult/archaic/polysyllabic words. Contain too many complicated characters from too many different cultural backgrounds. 

In the current capitalist climate, picture books need to have TENSION. Romances needs to have SEX. Middle grade novels need to be FAST PACED and also SUPER SHORT because no one has an attention span anymore and 10-year-olds are intimidated by thick books. Plus, thick books are expensive. And for the love of all that is holy, do NOT write any more Young Adult Fantasy. Ever. 

I cried after the call where my agent told me that last one.

She’s not my agent anymore.

Honestly, it’s a miracle I was even traditionally published in the first place. A handful of excellent people had the privilege of being able to take a chance on me, and for that I will be forever grateful. These days, no one can afford to take a risk. I get it. 

But I can’t afford to stop writing. So I didn’t.

In late October 2023, I got the rights back to the Woodcutter Sisters books. The series of my heart. You remember them: they read like a mashup of The Princess Bride and a non-Disney Once Upon a Time. Yeah. The YA Fantasy ones. Got awards and stuff. There were seven Woodcutter sisters, all named after the days of the week. I got to write Sun-Fri. Harcourt orphaned me before I could tell the Pirate Queen sister’s tale. My working title was Thieftess.

Thieftess has a listing on Goodreads. As of this writing, there are 2 reviews. The first laments the news of my publisher dropping the series. The second was posted by someone so excited to announce that the series would be returning that THEY WROTE IN ALL CAPS. Both of these entries delight me to no end.

Freedom is a beautiful thing. I consciously took advantage of mine this past decade. I lived, defiantly. I chased storms, learned other languages, traveled the world, and made hundreds of new friends all over that world. And I quietly, constantly, kept writing in the background. 

In a way, my series being released from my trad publisher was a mercy. I wasn’t sure the committee would let me get away with all the things I wanted to do in the rest of the books anyway. And when it came time to finish writing Thieftess—eleven years after I started it—I embraced my tiny rebellions.

In nutshell, Thieftess:

• is a YA-Appropriate Romantic Pirate Adventure Fantasy
• is far too optimistic 
• is too long (for a traditional YA)
• has too many characters
• has too many chapters (it reads like a web novel)
• switches POV without announcing who is speaking instead of a chapter title
• has chapter titles
• has maps
• features pirates who get drunk, die, kiss, kill, and steal, but there’s still no sex
• stars a female protagonist in her late 20s (but so was Alanna of Trebond, eventually)

The book also contains a million Easter eggs, but so did Enchanted. Heck, so did AlphaOops. That’s a very on-brand Alethea thing. But the rest is my rebellion.

Here in 2026, joy itself is a rebellion. Kindness is a rebellion. Naps are a rebellion. Poetry is a rebellion. Smart books that trust their readers are a rebellion. Reading prologues and epilogues is a rebellion. Writing in cursive is a rebellion. Writing your own emails is a rebellion. Leaving your phone in the other room is a rebellion. Going outside is a rebellion. Speaking more than one language is a rebellion. Quoting Shakespeare is a rebellion. Imperfection is a rebellion. Daring to fail over and over again is a rebellion.

Finishing this absolutely gorgeous book that took me eleven years to write—and then releasing it into the world—is my rebellion.

When I originally took @princessalethea as my screen name on LiveJournal (remember LiveJournal?) it was because my role model was the feisty leader of another particularly infamous rebel alliance. I mean to carry on in that same fine tradition.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go write a book with a bunch of sex in it. Because I’m still broke. 

Love you, Squad.

xox

Princess Alethea

PS: Goonies Never Say Die

Thieftess: Amazon

Author socials: Website|Patreon|Linktree