“I was eaten, plain and simple. It felt like being burned alive, like every cell in my body was exploding. Then everything stopped—my breathing, my pain, my heart . . .”
The Innocent is an intensely passionate lyrical novel and modern myth, at once a coming of age story and a guide to life’s most mysterious and powerful force: Love. Reminiscent of A.S. Byatt’s Possession” and Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, yet with its own incomparable style, The Innocent weaves the tale of a young woman’s supernatural journey through sorrow and death toward fulfillment and understanding.
Alexa Wyndham is a painfully sheltered girl from Brooklyn with a mysterious past. She is an innocent in every sense of the word, her views of the world formed through the lens of the poetry and literary novels she reads. Now on her own in college in Manhattan she finds the big bad city is just waiting to devour her. When she goes out with friends on Valentine’s Day, a stunning kiss from a stranger is her introduction to this new and dangerous world. Her would be lover is after her flesh. It contains a most powerful transformative energy, and the supernatural creatures of the city are willing to do anything for a taste of it.
Her only hope of survival is eight-hundred-year-old, Cristien LaRoche. An incubus who has killed every woman he has been with. He will be damned if helps Alexa and damned if he doesn’t. Even if he can save her once, or save her a hundred times from those who seek her power, he still won’t be able to protect her from his own deadly embrace.
Inspired by the myth of Cupid and Psyche, and the novel Jane Eyre, The Innocent will follow the harrowing path of Alexa and Cristien as they trade quips and quotes, chase and lose love, forgive and do the unforgivable, betray and are betrayed, until finally one will come face to face with the white light and the other his darkest nightmare. Together, Alexa and Cristien will have to answer the question, “Is Love stronger than Death?”
Targeted Age Group:: 18-40
What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
I read too many romance novels that had a lot of sex and no real love and only one-dimensional characters without soul. I missed real love stories like in the classics Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Tristan and Iseult. Love is about passion, poetry, desperation, triumphs and failures. It is about giving everything you have to give and more. It is about the heart mostly, sex is only a part of it. I wanted to write a book about real love.
How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
I looked around at the people I knew and they just became the characters in my book.
Book Sample
I was eaten, plain and simple. It felt like being burned alive, like every cell in my body was exploding. Then everything stopped—my breathing, my pain, my heart. I saw my mother’s face. “Hello, Alexandra. Hello, my baby,” she cooed as I clutched her finger. I took my first steps into her arms. As soon as I could talk, I called myself “Alexa.” Then I was out the door and off to school. I never realized how happy I was before the world pointed out all my differences. Then I turned to books. I read life away. I hid behind pages. It seemed like forever while I watched myself sitting in my house, or on a bus, or in a library with a book in my face.
Fast-forward. I was a freshman in college and decided for once to go out and party in Manhattan like a normal person, and, of course, that’s what started me on the road to being murdered. At first, I couldn’t figure out why this was happening to me or how I deserved it, but in the end I understood. It’s how it always begins, how Fate starts pushing you, whittling you down, making you over. It always starts small like a pebble or a flash of snow skittering down a slope right before the avalanche. You look up, take a breath, and then here it comes, and there is nothing you can do but try and survive it. But the thing is, if you do, you’ll never be the same, and that’s the whole point.
About the Author:
Candice Lee holds a BFA in Creative Writing. As a long time New Yorker who has studied myth, religion, poetry and philosophy from the Mahabharata to the Mabinogion, she has developed a healthy sense of the sublime and the ridiculous. She enjoys travelling with her husband through the Mediterranean where every street is an arti-fact and every sunrise a poem. She is also a sculptor of mythic subjects.
Links to Purchase Print Books
Link to Buy The Innocent: A Myth Print Edition at Amazon
Links to Purchase eBooks
Link To Buy The Innocent: A Myth On Amazon
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