In the Company of Shadows (ICoS)
This series is written for adults
Only read if you are the correct age for your country! We wrote it to be 18+ in the US. It contains explicit sex, violence, psychological and physical torture, and language. (It also contains humor, a love story, and sweet moments so it isn’t all fire and brimstone)
We are not responsible for your choices in your reading materials.
Before you read further, please note that ICoS was written and finished over the course of around 10 years spanning the mid 2000’s into the early 2010’s. For all that time, I believed Santino Hassell aka Sonny existed. However, in early 2018 it came to light that he does not exist as his own human being. The two people who I believed were his roommates who he talked about over the years have turned out to be him – whether one or both of them, I don’t think anyone knows. There is no Sonny or Santino, at least not in the way it was represented to us all. Only Mike and Alicia know for sure what was going on in the background.
This page and a lot of ICoS stuff around the internet was written prior to that knowledge. I did a light edit on it but I wanted to add this note at the top in case I missed something, or in case you were wondering why I didn’t directly link his website. I used to, before I learned the truth and everything else that occurred in the background. I did write ICoS with someone, and whoever that was did a lot of hard work on it along with me over the years, and I think together we came out with a great story that’s largely well-loved by the readers. In good conscience I can’t remove his name everywhere because regardless of everything else he has done, I won’t take credit for someone else’s work. Whoever wrote it with me did a good job of writing it with me, I just wish they had been truthful in the process. And that they hadn’t hurt so many people along the way. I have to believe that includes themselves.
I don’t have answers but if you want more information on all of this and the other allegations that came out, you can read my post about it. If you have ICoS questions, please don’t try to contact Sonny, even if you find contact information. You can direct them at me. Based on everything I have since learned about background things that happened, I don’t want to direct anyone to him even if they can find him, because I don’t have reason to believe it would be healthy for anyone involved. I hope that will someday change, but those are choices only they can make.
For now, please feel free to check out ICoS. If you read it, I hope you enjoy!
Brightest of blessings to you and yours, my friend– from my house to yours.
-Ais
Get the books
EBOOKS/ONLINE – This is all FREE:
★ Free download of the entire series in the ebook links section on this page or on www.inthecompanyofshadows.com
★ Read online at our original site — and find bonus materials! (Note: information on that site may be outdated)
★Goodreads — check our Santino & Ais group at GR as well for more bonus material.
PAPERBACK:Only available for Evenfall Director’s Cut Volume 1, Volume 2 (password for both is vega).
Signed copies: We can’t sign your copies, unfortunately, because of how difficult and expensive shipping would be. However, if you want to you can purchase some stickers which have our signatures on them which you can stick in the book and feel like you got it signed. Here are the signed stickers.
Note: do you NOT have to purchase these books (or anything) to read ICoS! This is solely for those who wish to have paperback copies. The paperbacks are not professionally edited; we edited them ourselves. It’s exactly the same thing as you get when you download the ebooks for free.
ebook links
Safari users have told us they have difficulty getting the menu to show on our icos.com site so I’ve included the download links here as well.
➊ Evenfall: we recommend new readers start with the Director’s Cut version: **
▷Volume I – epub, mobi, and pdf ◇ Also at mediafire and mega
▷Volume II – epub, mobi, and pdf ◇ Also at mediafire and mega
➋ Afterimage ▷ epub, mobi, and pdf ◇ Also at mediafire, mega, or Goodreads
➌ Interludes ▷ epub, mobi, and pdf ◇ Also at mediafire, mega, or Goodreads
➍ Fade (final book) ▷ epub, mobi, and pdf ◇ Also at mediafire, mega, or Goodreads
➄ 1/27: An ICoS Anthology set after Fade
▷ epub, mobi, and pdf ◇ Also at mediafire, mega, or Goodreads
✯ Or, download the entire series in all formats at once ▷ mediafire, mega
**We recommend new readers read the DC version because it is edited and more streamlined, however we have sometimes received requests from old readers who want to reread the original Evenfall. If you would like to access the old version, find it in ebook version as epub, mobi, or pdf or read online here.
Like being in the know? There are two newsletter options for you below!
(I didn’t plan on that rhyming but I enjoy that it did)
In the Company of Shadows mailing list
Want to know when we update anything related to ICoS? Newsletter central! You have options! Below you can sign up for ICoS-specific updates, for the shared newsletter/mailing list that Santino and I both use for ICoS. If you want to be alerted to major things in the ICoS world, like if we ever edit the rest of the books and self-publish them, or if we ever write more beyond 1/27, and so on, this is the mailing list to use! We don’t send out on little things on this list, sadly, so you won’t get alerted every time there’s an ICoS post anywhere, but you can follow us on social media to find that elsewhere 🙂
Ais’ mailing list
Sign up to my newsletter, for all things Ais! I will post lots of things, including excerpts on stories I’m writing, writing progress, Ais’ Terrible Art (a new tiny thing per newsletter), links to posts or other information I think you may like, announcements about releases, etc.
There could be some overlap with the ICoS list but the difference is I will include ALL things I do in this newsletter, and mention ICoS-related things when needed. The ICoS list is just for ICoS stuff Santino and I both write.
ICoS merch, if you're curious
You can find some ICoS merch at the Agency Gift Shop if you really love the story and want something more. The downside is Zazzle has super expensive baseline costs so I couldn’t make things as cheap as I want. If you like the idea of something and know of a better place I can go to give you a higher quality item for a better cost, let me know. Or just hand make things for yourself so you don’t have to pay anything at all 🙂
M/M Romance Group 2014 Member's Choice Awards
The M/M Romance Group on Goodreads currently has over 17,000 members. They do an annual Member’s Choice Awards, and 2014 was the first year we were nominated. We were nominated for a few awards individually or together, and in the end we won two awards!
ICoS won 1st Place All-Time Favorite M/M Romance series, and 1/27 (an ICoS anthology) won 3rd Place: Best Free Story. This is astounding! We were shocked that we won anything. Thank you so much to everyone who voted!
1st Place: Favorite All-Time M/M Romance
The In the Company of Shadows series won 1st Place (!!!) for Favorite All-Time M/M Romance. I’m still shocked we placed at all, let alone first place!
3rd Place: Best Free Story
1/27, an anthology after ICoS, won 3rd Place in Best Free Story! To really understand the anthology, you’d need to read the whole series. I never thought we’d win a standalone award for it!
About In the Company of Shadows
In the Company of Shadows, aka ICoS, is a slash (male/male) series I wrote with Santino Hassell.
We started it just for fun for ourselves back in 2005/2006, with no plans to make it a cohesive story, let alone ever share it with anyone. Somehow, it became a massive undertaking that spanned 7 years, over 1.5 million words, 4 books, an anthology, and a dedicated group of fans from around the world. A lot of my joking material (like Ais’ Terrible Art) comes from ICoS.
The series is dark and graphic in many ways, but there’s also humor and a love story that weaves throughout the plot. If you like that sort of thing you should check it out. If you don’t like that style, you may not want to start. We’ve been told that the series can be addictive, and people often stay up late powering through the entire series in the span of a week or two, ignoring everything else in favor of getting to the next chapter. There is a lot of lost sleep on ICoS’ tab.
