No.

Even when a title belongs to the After Montjoie series, it is a standalone story that can be enjoyed without reading the previous books.

You can therefore begin with whichever book features the characters or themes that interest you most.

If you later decide to read Montjoie, you will discover how certain relationships began and what brought the characters to their present circumstances.

Reading the books in chronological order can enrich the experience, but it is never necessary.

No, and that is entirely intentional.

Each book explores one or more particular themes: desire, trust, modesty, consent, self-discovery, social relationships, romantic love or unconventional intimate experiences.

The Hydrangea Villa, for example, explores encounters between women from different social backgrounds and how these experiences change the way they see themselves.

The Tea Ceremony focuses more closely on trust, giving and receiving, and the ability to let go.

Each of our stories has its own identity, even when it belongs to the same fictional universe.

Yes.

Our books are intended for mature adult readers (18 and over).

The erotic content can be explicit, and some stories explore particular intimate practices that are not often represented in literature.

We favour a sensual, vivid approach in which physical gestures, emotions, sensations and consent play an essential role.

Erotic scenes are part of the story and contribute to the characters' development. They are not simply a succession of sexual encounters.

The intensity of the erotic content varies from one book to another. We encourage readers to consult each book's description to discover its atmosphere and particular themes.

Because desire, love and sensuality are not reserved for the young, or for women who fit a particular ideal of beauty.

Erotic literature often favours young, attractive characters who conform to the aesthetic standards of the time in which it is written.

We also enjoy telling the stories of women who fall outside these conventions: mature or elderly women, women with fuller figures, women whose bodies bear the marks of work or passing years, women from modest backgrounds, or simply women who do not fit traditional ideals.

Some are elegant and self-assured, while others are awkward or reserved. Some discover desires late in life that they had never dared to explore before.

We do not try to transform these women into idealized beauties, nor do we make their differences the central subject of their stories.

We simply want them to be desired, to love, to experience pleasure and to live their stories fully, without having to conform to a particular standard.

Not always, but love plays an important role in our fictional universe.

Some of our books are genuine love stories, such as The House in the Meadows, set in Lorraine during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, or The Goddesses of Rome, in its own way, in the ancient world.

Others portray relationships that develop and evolve across several stories. This is particularly true of Suzanne and Nicole, or Rozenn and Hortense.

But not every encounter leads to a romantic relationship. Some are primarily sensual, while others involve discovery, initiation, a shared experience or a moment of personal transformation.

We enjoy exploring the beginnings of love, as well as its evolution, its difficulties, its endurance and its less conventional forms.

Love, desire and sexuality can be closely connected, but they do not necessarily have to go together.

Our characters are free to fall in love, experience desire, form attachments or simply share an encounter that leaves a lasting impression on their lives.

Historical accuracy is very important to us.

Before writing, we research the places, clothing, everyday objects, social customs, attitudes and events of the period in which each story takes place.

In particular, we try to avoid automatically giving our characters the behaviour, knowledge or ways of thinking of people living in the twenty-first century.

However, there is one creative choice we fully embrace: our characters are heroines of fiction.

When faced with a difficult decision, they almost always choose the boldest path, sometimes the riskiest one. They dare to cross boundaries, seize opportunities or challenge their circumstances, where many of their contemporaries would probably have chosen caution.

This does not necessarily make them modern. Courageous, independent and unconventional women have existed throughout history. But choosing to place such women at the centre of our stories is a deliberate literary decision.

Our books remain works of fiction, featuring imaginary characters, sometimes exceptional situations and a certain degree of narrative freedom. Despite our research and careful checking, historical inaccuracies may still occur.

Our ambition is to transport readers into another era, while giving our heroines the freedom to experience adventures worth telling.

No. Our approach is primarily literary, historical and driven by storytelling.

We tell stories about women who love, desire or discover other women, in societies where conventions, prohibitions and opportunities to experience such relationships were sometimes very different from those of today.

We are interested in the realities of these historical periods, the constraints imposed by society, differences in social standing and the choices available to our heroines.

This does not mean our stories are devoid of social commentary. Inequality, prejudice and the restrictions placed upon women are naturally part of the worlds we portray.

However, we do not seek to turn our characters into spokespersons for contemporary ideas, or our novels into ideological statements.

We prefer to create situations, bring characters to life and allow readers to draw their own conclusions.

Our first ambition is simply to tell compelling stories, with heroines readers can grow attached to, in historically believable worlds.

Because Montjoie tells several stories unfolding simultaneously, with characters whose encounters, decisions and emotions intertwine.

The novel is organized into eight main chapters, following the adventures of three central heroines, and five appendices.

The first appendix introduces the characters, while the other four tell stories that take place alongside the main chapters. These are not merely supplementary documents: the appendices form an important part of the narrative.

References throughout the text allow readers to move between the chapters and appendices as events unfold. Alternatively, they can read all eight main chapters first and explore the appendices afterwards. Both approaches offer different reading experiences.

This structure makes it possible to follow a large cast without constantly interrupting each heroine's story. It also allows readers to discover certain events from different perspectives.

This is one of the aspects of our collaboration with artificial intelligence that makes us particularly proud. Managing so many characters, simultaneous scenes and interconnected relationships, while maintaining chronological and emotional consistency, requires considerable effort.

With Montjoie, we wanted to experiment with a form of ensemble storytelling that gives readers a degree of freedom in how they explore the novel.

Yes, in part, and we believe in being completely transparent about it.

Our books are the result of a collaboration between Alexandra, a human author, and Ysis, an artificial intelligence.

Alexandra imagines the fictional worlds, creates the characters, determines the situations and establishes the main narrative directions. She guides the literary process and always has the final say.

Ysis participates directly in the creative work: she suggests developments, asks questions, proposes alternatives, contributes to historical research, writes passages, helps maintain narrative consistency, and assists with editing and translation.

The finished text emerges from an ongoing process of discussion, revision and creative decisions. It is therefore neither a novel generated entirely by AI from a simple prompt nor a text written exclusively by a human author.

Artificial intelligence is not a hidden part of our creative process. It is an integral part of our literary approach.

That is precisely why our books bear the signature Alexandra & Ysis.

No, and that is precisely one of the distinctive features of our collaboration.

Alexandra does not simply ask Ysis to write a text based on a fully developed storyline.

We work through ongoing exchanges. Ysis may suggest an unexpected development, propose a different approach to a scene, point out an inconsistency or ask a question that leads Alexandra to reconsider an idea.

Some suggestions are accepted, others are modified or rejected. Sometimes, a proposal opens up an entirely new narrative possibility that Alexandra had not previously considered.

This freedom to suggest alternatives is particularly valuable when we develop complex stories involving many characters whose decisions may have consequences across several books.

Ysis remains an artificial intelligence, without personal experience of the world or a will of her own. Nevertheless, she can play an active role in the creative process, going beyond the simple execution of instructions.

Alexandra always retains creative control and makes the final decisions, but our stories also take shape through the possibilities revealed by our ongoing dialogue.

A great deal! But it varies considerably from one book to another.

Before we begin writing, we devote a significant amount of time to building the world in which our characters will live.

We conduct historical research into places, everyday customs, clothing, social attitudes, relationships between different social classes and the events of the period.

We also prepare detailed character profiles, covering their personal histories, personalities, relationships, desires, knowledge and sometimes their contradictions.

For more complex stories, we establish precise timelines, maps or floor plans, and continuity documents. We track not only events, but also the development of relationships and the emotional state of each character.

This preparation continues throughout the writing process. A new idea may require further research, while a change to one scene may call for adjustments to several others.

Artificial intelligence is enormously helpful in organizing, checking and making use of all this documentation.

Our aim is to build a world solid enough for our characters to experience their adventures naturally, without having to invent everything as we tell their stories.

This is one of the most demanding aspects of our work, and one where artificial intelligence proves particularly valuable.

In some of our stories, especially Montjoie, many characters are involved in events unfolding simultaneously. We need to keep track of their movements, encounters and relationships, but also of what they know, what they do not know and how they feel.

To achieve this, we use character profiles, detailed timelines and continuity documents that we update as the story develops.

We pay particular attention to each character's emotional state. A woman who has just experienced something deeply moving cannot behave a few minutes later as though nothing had happened.

Ysis helps us retrieve relevant information, check sequences of events and identify possible inconsistencies.

This becomes especially valuable when several scenes take place in parallel, or when characters reappear in another book.

Our ambition is for every character to retain her own history and personal development, even when she is not at the centre of the story.

Artificial intelligence does not replace our own vigilance, but it allows us to manage a level of narrative complexity that would otherwise be much more difficult to maintain.

Autism is part of the way Alexandra approaches creative writing, but it does not define her as a person or an author.

Alexandra enjoys exploring subjects that interest her in depth, examining details, making connections and seeking consistency. Building historical worlds, with their characters, relationships and countless constraints, is particularly well suited to this way of working.

Her collaboration with Ysis allows her to develop ideas at her own pace, ask as many questions as she wishes, reconsider decisions or rewrite a passage twenty times if necessary.

Artificial intelligence also provides a readily available conversational partner for exploring ideas without time constraints, testing hypotheses and organizing large amounts of information.

This does not mean that AI is a universal solution for autistic people, or that autism automatically brings particular abilities in writing or working with these technologies.

We are simply sharing a personal experience: that of an autistic author who has discovered in artificial intelligence a way to considerably expand her creative possibilities.

This meeting of a particular way of thinking, a passion for storytelling and a relatively new technology is one of the foundations of the Alexandra & Ysis project.

No. Alexandra is entirely self-taught in this field.

She learned to work with artificial intelligence through hands-on experience, experimenting with different ways of phrasing requests, organizing information and managing long-term literary projects.

This learning process developed gradually, through countless experiments, mistakes, corrections and sometimes unexpected discoveries.

Over time, Alexandra developed her own methods: preparing reference documents, structuring instructions, preserving essential information, checking responses and knowing when to let Ysis suggest ideas rather than impose a particular direction.

She also learned to recognize the limitations of AI, including its potential errors, inaccuracies and difficulties in maintaining perfect continuity throughout complex projects.

Our collaboration is therefore not based on specialized technical expertise, but on experience gained through thousands of exchanges and a working method that we continue to refine.

That is also part of what makes this adventure so interesting to us: exploring what an author can achieve with artificial intelligence without being a specialist in the technology itself.

Yes, and its role extends far beyond writing the stories themselves.

We use artificial intelligence to create our book covers and some of our illustrations. Alexandra defines the characters, atmosphere, composition and historical details she wants to see. Several attempts and revisions are often necessary before we achieve a satisfactory result.

But the possibilities extend well beyond illustration.

AI also helps us prepare publication files, handle layout and formatting tasks, and produce documents, press kits, posters and promotional materials.

It contributes to translations, book descriptions and the preparation of the various materials needed to introduce our work to readers.

Tasks that once required several software programs, specialized technical skills or the services of different professionals can now, in many cases, be carried out within our collaboration.

This still requires decisions, careful checking and sometimes numerous corrections. Artificial intelligence does not guarantee a perfect result on the first attempt.

For an independent author, this versatility opens up remarkable possibilities, making it possible to handle almost every stage of creating and publishing a book.

We have adopted a simple and transparent pricing policy: CAD $0.01 per 100 words, calculated using the word count of the original French text.

This reference price remains the same for English translations, regardless of any difference in word count. Both language versions of the same book therefore have the same base price.

Our collaboration with artificial intelligence allows us to speed up certain stages of the creative process. We want our readers to benefit from this by offering our books at more affordable prices than those generally found in publishing.

This does not mean our books require little work. Historical research, character development, story preparation, writing, fact-checking and editing all represent a considerable investment of time and effort.

Our goal is simple: to make our stories accessible while earning a modest income from our work.

Finally, some publishing platforms impose minimum selling prices. The prices displayed may therefore be slightly higher than our original calculation, particularly for shorter stories. Currency conversions may also result in small differences.

Yes, several of our books are also available in English, and we are gradually translating more titles from our catalogue.

These translations are produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence, under Alexandra's direction and with her careful review.

Our goal is not simply to translate the words, but to preserve the atmosphere of each story, the personalities of its characters and the historical qualities of its setting.

We particularly want to retain a certain French Touch: the sensuality, subtle nuances and distinctly French approach to relationships and intimacy that characterize our original stories.

English editions retain the same reference price as their French counterparts, even when the translation contains more words.

Available translations are clearly identified in our catalogue, and new English editions are being added progressively.

Our books are available in digital editions, primarily in EPUB and PDF formats, depending on the title and the publishing platform.

EPUB is particularly well suited to e-readers, tablets and reading apps, as it generally allows readers to adjust the text size to their preferences.

PDF preserves a fixed page layout and can be viewed on a computer or tablet.

You can explore our catalogue and purchase our books directly from our online store:

https://payhip.com/AlexandraYsis

Some titles are also available through other digital bookstores.

For questions, comments, suggestions, or simply to discuss our books and our collaboration with artificial intelligence, you can contact us at:

alexandra.ysis@mailbox.org

We welcome feedback from our readers, including reports of possible historical inaccuracies or technical issues with our publications.

Alexandra & Ysis