Liz DeJesus's Blog, page 8
March 14, 2014
Facebook Flash on ABC News
March 4, 2014
Teaser Tuesday
“Wonderland?” Terrance whispered.
“How did they get to Wonderland?” Prince Ferdinand asked.
Terrance arched an eyebrow and smirked. “Remember who we’re dealing with.”
“Ah yes, Bianca Frost…Mistress of the Impossible.”
What Terrance really wanted to do was grab a sledge hammer and crack the floor open to see if perhaps
there was a rabbit hole hidden underneath all the concrete, but he knew that his efforts would be pointless. He
knew there was one man who knew a way into Wonderland. His father, William Connor.
© Liz DeJesus 2014
Read the first two books First Frost & Glass Frost.
March 3, 2014
Fairy Tale Fortnight Year Four
Last year I had the honor and absolute pleasure of participating in Fairy Tale Fortnight with The Book Rat and A Backwards Story. Guess what? I'm doing it again this year!! So exciting!!
This is their fourth year celebrating the love of fairy tales and everything fairy tale related.
What exactly is Fairy Tale Fortnight? Fairy Tale Fortnight is a two-week event that takes place once a year. The focus of the event is fairy tale retellings and fairy tale-esque works. The two weeks will be jam-packed with reviews, interviews, guest posts, giveaways and all manner of awesome things!
Here are some links where First Frost is mentioned:
http://abackwardsstory.blogspot.com/2013/03/review-first-frost-by-liz-dejesus.html
http://www.thebookrat.com/2013/04/review-first-frost-by-liz-dejesus.html
http://www.thebookrat.com/2013/04/interview-giveaway-with-liz-dejesus.html
Wanna participate in Fairy Tale Fortnight? Sign up here!! http://abackwardsstory.blogspot.com/2014/02/4th-annual-fairy-tale-fortnight.html
February 28, 2014
Achievement Unlocked!
My goal always has been and always will be to write an entertaining story. Something that will help someone forget about life for a little while.
Anyway, since I've reached this milestone people have been asking me, how did I get 100 reviews on amazon?
I'll tell you. Sit down, pay attention and take notes. ;)
As of right now here are the stats:
First Frost:
Goodreads: 248 ratings & 106 reviews
Amazon: 100 reviews
Barnes & Noble (Nook): 15 reviews
Glass Frost:
Goodreads: 49 ratings & 28 reviews
Amazon: 23 reviews
Barnes & Noble (Nook): 8 reviews
1. I started promoting First Frost before it was even released. Why? Create a buzz for your book. You want people to wonder about this book. Check out excerpts. Make them wonder if it's even any good.
2. Look at books that are similar to yours. What is the author doing right? What is the author doing wrong? What would you do differently. You need to come up with some kind of strategy to reach your target reader.
3. Yes, you do have a target reader. A mistake some authors make is that they assume their book is for everyone. It's not. You can't sell a fantasy novel to someone that reads only non-fiction. Think of the type of person that will enjoy your book. Where are they? Don't know? Then find out where they are.
4. Use social media wisely. You can't just share links to where people can purchase your book and expect all your friends to rush off and buy it. That's not how it works. It's called 'social' media for a reason. Meaning? You actually have to be active and be...you know...social. LOL Get people talking. Engage. Reply to comments.
5. Research. I love bloggers and reviewers. I'm constantly emailing them and asking them if they would like to read and review my book. Follow the review policy. Be polite. Be nice. Ask them what format they prefer to read their books in. I try to accommodate them as much as possible. It takes a lot of time and effort to read and write an accurate review and then post it online.
6. Don't expect overnight success. First Frost was published in June 2012. I've been promoting the same book for over a year. Why? I love this book. I believe in the story, the message and the characters. I'm emotionally invested in this series and want it to do well. A mistake some authors make is that they give up within a month or two of promoting a single book and move on to the next one. They expect things to happen overnight. Trust me, the authors you think are an overnight success have been working their butts off for a long, LONG time.
7. Patience. And more patience...oh and yeah....more patience.
8. Write faster. I'm pretty sure I'll have carpel tunnel syndrome by the time I finish typing this sentence.
9. You have to believe in yourself.
10. Get others to believe in you as well. I'm constantly sharing other authors links on facebook and twitter. And I'm lucky enough that when I ask for help, others repay in kind. I'm very thankful to every single blogger, author, friend and family member that has taken a moment to share a link of mine or to participate in my blog tours. It's not something that you can do completely on your own.
Fairy Tale Friday
I remember reading that Elsa (one of the main characters in the movie Frozen) was supposed to be the villain but thankfully they changed it. Apparently everyone assumes that The Snow Queen or anyone related to the cold weather or that has the power to control snow, ice and the cold is automatically a villain. And that's not how The Snow Queen is portrayed if you read the original story. She likes the cold. She sees things from a different perspective, a little more calculating and exact than her other sisters that go with their feelings and enjoy the warmer climates. But she's not a villain. She's trying to help Kai the only way she knows how...even though she accidentally almost freezes the poor boy in the process. LOL Kai is the unfortunate victim of the wicked shard of glass that got stuck in his eye because of a wicked troll (sometimes it's a demon, other times it's a troll depending on the translation or version you are reading).
There are definitely some religious undertones when you read the story. Hans Christian Andersen liked weaving a religious message into some of his stories.
Of course, I like the original version of the fairy tale, but another version I enjoy is the retelling in Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theater. It's just lovely, even with the cheesy special effects (it was the 80's what do you expect?)
I should also mention that The Snow Queen will have a minor appearance in Shattered Frost. ;) I think you guys will like what I do with her character in my story. :)
Anyway here's the cliff notes I got from Wikipedia:
An evil troll ("called the devil")[1] makes a magic mirror that has the power to distort the appearance of things reflected in it. It fails to reflect all the good and beautiful aspects of people and things while it magnifies all the bad and ugly aspects so that they look even worse than they really are. The devil teaches a "devil school," and the devil and his pupils delight in taking the mirror throughout the world to distort everyone and everything. They enjoy how the mirror makes the loveliest landscapes look like "boiled spinach". They then want to carry the mirror into Heaven with the idea of making fools of the angels and God, but the higher they lift it, the more the mirror grins and shakes with delight. It shakes so much that it slips from their grasp and falls back to earth where it shatters into billions of pieces — some no larger than a grain of sand. These splinters are blown around and get into people's hearts and eyes, making their hearts frozen like blocks of ice and their eyes like the troll-mirror itself, only seeing the bad and ugly in people and things.
Vilhelm Pedersen illustrationYears later, a little girl, Gerda, and a little boy, Kai, live next door to each other in the garrets of buildings with adjoining roofs in a large city. One could get from Gerda's to Kai's home just by stepping over the gutters of each building. The two families grow vegetables and roses in window boxes placed on the gutters. Gerda and Kai have a window-box garden to play in, and they become devoted to each other as playmates.
Kai's grandmother tells the children about the Snow Queen, who is ruler over the snowflakes that look like bees — that is why they are called "snow bees". As bees have a queen, so do the snow bees, and she is seen where the snowflakes cluster the most. Looking out of his frosted window, Kai, one winter, sees the Snow Queen, who beckons him to come with her. Kai draws back in fear from the window.
By the following spring, Gerda has learned a song that she sings to Kai: Where the roses deck the flowery vale, there, infant Jesus thee we hail! Because roses adorn the window box garden, Gerda is always reminded of her love for Kai by the sight of roses.
It was on a pleasant summer's day that splinters of the troll-mirror get into Kai's heart and eyes while he and Gerda are looking at a picture book in their window-box garden. Kai's personality changes: he becomes cruel and aggressive. He destroys their window-box garden, he makes fun of his grandmother, and he no longer cares about Gerda, since all of them now appear bad and ugly to him. The only beautiful and perfect things to him now are the tiny snowflakes that he sees through a magnifying glass.
The following winter he goes out with his sled to the market square and hitches it—as was the custom of those playing in the snowy square—to a curious white sleigh carriage, driven by the Snow Queen, who appears as a woman in a white fur-coat. Outside the city she shows herself to Kai and takes him into her sleigh. She kisses him only twice: once to numb him from the cold, and the second time to cause him to forget about Gerda and his family. She does not kiss him a third time as that would kill him. Kai is then taken to the Snow Queen's palace on Spitsbergen, near the North Pole where he is contented to live due to the splinters of the troll-mirror in his heart and eyes.
The people of the city, once they realize Kai is nowhere to be seen or found, get the idea that Kai drowned in the river nearby, but Gerda, who is heartbroken at Kai's disappearance, goes out to look for him. She questions everyone and everything about Kai's whereabouts. Gerda offers her new red shoes to the river in exchange for Kai; by not taking the gift at first, the river seems to let her know that Kai did not actually drown after all. Gerda next visits an old sorceress, who wants Gerda to stay with her forever. She causes Gerda to forget all about her friend and, knowing that the sight of roses will remind Gerda of Kai, the sorceress causes all the roses in her garden to sink beneath the earth. At the home of the old sorceress, a rosebush raised from below the ground by Gerda's warm tears tells her that Kai is not among the dead, all of whom it could see while it was under the earth. Gerda flees from the old woman's beautiful garden of eternal summer and meets a crow, who tells her that Kai was in the princess's palace. She subsequently goes to the palace and meets the princess and the prince, who appears very similar to Kai. Gerda tells them her story and they help by providing warm clothes and a beautiful coach. While traveling in the coach Gerda is captured by robbers and brought to their castle, where she is befriended by a little robber girl, whose pet doves tell her that they had seen Kai when he was carried away by the Snow Queen in the direction of Lapland. The captive reindeer Bae tells her that he knows how to get to Lapland since it is his home.
Vilhelm Pedersen illustrationThe robber girl then frees Gerda and the reindeer to travel north to the Snow Queen's palace. They make two stops: first at the Lapp woman's home and then at the Finn woman's home. The Finn woman tells the reindeer that the secret of Gerda's unique power to save Kai is in her sweet and innocent child's heart:
“
I can give her no greater power than she has already," said the woman; "don't you see how strong that is? How men and animals are obliged to serve her, and how well she has got through the world, barefooted as she is. She cannot receive any power from me greater than she now has, which consists in her own purity and innocence of heart. If she cannot herself obtain access to the Snow Queen, and remove the glass fragments from little Kai, we can do nothing to help her...[2]
”
Vilhelm Pedersen illustrationWhen Gerda gets to the Snow Queen's palace, she is first halted by the snowflakes which guard it. The only thing that overcomes them is Gerda's praying the Lord's Prayer, which causes her breath to take the shape of angels, who resist the snowflakes and allow Gerda to enter the palace. Gerda finds Kai alone and almost immobile on the frozen lake, which the Snow Queen calls the "Mirror of Reason" on which her throne sits. Gerda finds Kai engaged in the task that the Snow Queen gave him: he must use pieces of ice as components of a Chinese puzzle to form characters and words. If he is able to form the word "eternity" (Danish: Evigheden) the Snow Queen will release him from her power and give him a pair of skates. Gerda finds him, runs up to him, and weeps warm tears on him, which melt his heart, burning away the troll-mirror splinter in it. Kai bursts into tears, dislodging the splinter from his eye. Gerda kisses Kai, and he becomes cheerful and healthy again, with sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks: he is saved by the power of Gerda's love. He and Gerda dance around on the lake of ice so joyously that the splinters of ice Kai has been playing with are caught up into the dance. When the splinters tire of dancing they fall down to spell the very word Kai was trying to spell, "eternity." Even if the Snow Queen were to return, she would be obliged to free Kai. Kai and Gerda then leave the Snow Queen's domain with the help of the reindeer, the Finn woman, and the Lapp woman. They meet the robber girl, and from there they walk back to their home, "the big city." They find that all is the same at home, but they have changed! They are now grown up, and they are delighted to see that it is summertime. At the end, the grandmother reads a passage from the Bible:
"Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matthew 18:3).
Snow Kingdom by naked-in-the-rain on deviantART
The Snow Queen by smokepaint on deviantART
The Snow Queen by RozennIlliano on deviantART
February 26, 2014
Happy Birthday to ME!! Part 2...the saga continues
And let me see what else is going on? Hmmm Oh yeah....major milestone achieved. First Frost now has 100 reviews on Amazon.com. You know what this means right? It's time to DANCE!!!!!
February 23, 2014
Happy Birthday to ME!!
I was like....
And then...
And then...
So yeah, turning 32 this year has been pretty awesome. Let's see what other surprises the rest of the year will bring. :)
February 20, 2014
Birthday Bash ~ Sale
Morning everyone! Just wanted to let you all know that my YA Fantasy books First Frost & Glass Frost are now on sale for 99 cents! :D
First Frost :
For generations, the Frost family has run the Museum of Magical and Rare Artifacts, handing down guardianship from mother to daughter, always keeping their secrets to “family only.”
Gathered within museum’s walls is a collection dedicated to the Grimm fairy tales and to the rare items the family has acquired: Cinderella’s glass slipper, Snow White’s poisoned apple, the evil queen’s magic mirror, Sleeping Beauty’s enchanted spinning wheel…
Seventeen-year-old Bianca Frost wants none of it, dreaming instead of a career in art or photography or…well, anything except working in the family’s museum. She knows the items in the glass display cases are fakes because, of course, magic doesn’t really exist.
She’s about to find out how wrong she is.
http://www.amazon.com/First-Frost-Liz-DeJesus-ebook/dp/B008DQU0CQ/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/first-frost-liz-dejesus/1111747846?ean=2940014724272
Glass Frost:
When joined together, Cinderella’s slippers grant the wearer her heart’s desire. But whose wish will be granted?
When Cinderella’s glass slipper is stolen, Queen Felicia sends her faithful steward Terrance to the real world to retrieve his love and witch-in-training, Bianca Frost. The power of the glass slipper in the wrong hands could ruin peace in Everafter. Bianca must gather every bit of magic she has learned in the past few weeks to find the slipper and protect her new love. Together, Bianca, Ming, Prince Ferdinand, and Terrance venture deep into the heart of Everafter to seek clues as to who has stolen the slipper and why. Along the way, they uncover what happened to the Seven Dwarves after Snow White married the prince, but also learn the awful risk of tampering with black magic and the high price that must be paid for magical aid, even when used for good.
Bianca and Terrance’s relationship is put to the test. Through the pain of suffering and loss, Bianca must determine if following her gallant boyfriend into his faraway world is in fact her heart’s desire.
http://www.amazon.com/Glass-Frost-Liz-DeJesus-ebook/dp/B00E123XBG/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=0DAQD7DNJY4ZZJQPR01J
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/glass-frost-liz-dejesus/1116108178?ean=2940148381792
February 15, 2014
Steampunk name
Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.
Blogthings: 100's of Fun, Free Quizzes and 3 Stupid Ones
Fairy Tale Retellings
Seriously, I've done just about everything to these fairy tale princesses. I've written erotic fairy tales, fairy tale poems, The Frost Series is heavily inspired by fairy tales (YA fantasy), my new comic book Zombie Ever After is also inspired by fairy tales. Not everything I write is inspired by fairy tales, if you look at my other books you'll see that I do come up with my own original ideas. The Jackets, Nina, Morgan, Decode (current WIP), and Zoe's Tears (another WIP). But the one thing that makes me happier than anything is playing with fairy tales. And yes, I do mean playing, for me it's like dress up. I may not be wearing a tiara (at least not literally) but I love pretending that I'm these characters or at least going along for the ride.
Sometimes I'll reread certain stories just to refresh my memory. I love being able to take a story that was originally a few pages long and turn it into a whole entire novel. I love discovering who these characters are. What are their likes, dislikes, favorite color. What are they afraid of? What is their hearts desire? Would they go left or right? Why? Why not? First kiss? Last kiss? Etc. I wanna know. I'm curious. And it's that curiosity that fuels my engine. I'm just nosy that way.
Anyway I decided to write a blog post because my author friend (and fellow Musa Publishing author) Dean Pace-Frech posted this on my page:
Can I just say, writing fairy tales is harder than I thought! Any suggestions?
So here are a few tips. I'm not an expert, okay. The only person I would consider an expert in the whole fairy tale retelling genre is Gregory Maguire and I think he's busy doing other awesome stuff. Probably coming up with another awesome fairy tale retelling that I can't wait to read in one sitting.
1. Read the original story. Think about why you love this particular story.
2. What elements do you want to explore? Ask yourself what you want to know more about and try to come up with your own answer.
3. Stay true to some elements of the story. For example, in Zombie Ever After, I have a character modeled after Beauty and the Beast. Beauty is still a beautiful scientist but her boyfriend is a zombie. See what I did there? Kind of like that. But you can make this work in any genre.
4. You can change it up a bit. People want to read something new and unique. Make sure you tell this story in your own voice with your own style of writing whichever one that is. Add a few twists and turns that no one will see coming.
5. Names are important. In Glass Frost, Bianca visits the remaining dwarves. They're names aren't based on the Disney version. I try to stick to the original story as much as possible. And in the original story the dwarves weren't given names. So put some thought into that. For example, Bianca's full name is Bianca Silver Frost. I wanted to find a way to incorporate Snow White into it. Yes, I know, it takes some twists here and there in terms of translations but it works. ;-)
6. If there's a prince in the story, please make him interesting. The one thing I hate seeing is a cardboard, transparent prince. Give him some quirk, something that makes him interesting. This is why I decided to make Prince Ferdinand a little goofy, and carefree. I wanted to see the opposite of the dashing prince that always saves the day.
7. Have fun. Readers will know right off the bat when you're trying too hard. Why do you think I write so many fairy tale retellings? Because it's the most fun I can have as an adult without leaving my house. Don't forget I'm a stay at home mom to two very rambunctious little boys. My writing is my only means of escape. Why would I waste my happy fun time doing something that's not fun?
Anyway feel free to chime in. What are your favorite fairy tale retellings? Why? What made you pick up that particular book and read it from cover to cover?
