K.M. Shea's Blog, page 27

Doctor Seuss

I shared this with my Facebook Champions, but it’s so incredibly awesome I feel like I need to share it here as well!

What do you think? I don’t want to imagine how many takes it took him to do this. I tried saying a few of the lines and I couldn’t get it even once!

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HoB&M: Will There Be More?!

This brings us to the final Hall of Blood and Mercy themed post. Already I’ve begun writing my next manuscript (The Prince’s Bargain, Elves of Lessa #3 for those who are curious) but I’ve been getting a lot of questions from Champions wondering if I’ll ever return to Hazel and Killian’s world, or if I’ll ever revist these characters, so I thought I would do one last blog post.

Hall of Blood and Mercy is a trilogy, and I won’t be adding on any additional books because I feel like I’ve successfully told Hazel’s and Killian’s story. However!

I’ve fallen in love with their world, and just because I won’t add onto their trilogy doesn’t mean I don’t have any additional plans for a new trilogy! So I’m officially confirming that you can expect to see a new trilogy in this world–probably in mid to late summer 2021. The series will be about…

OOHHHHH, YES, I WENT THERE! The next trilogy will follow Leila and will focus on the Night Court and the chaos it’s been thrown into since the death of the previous Night Queen and her Consort.

The Paragon–and Aphrodite and Bagel the donkey, of course–will make an appearance in Leila’s series, and you’ll even get to see glimpses of Hazel and Killian as well!

But I won’t be writing this trilogy until after I write Fairy Tale Enchantress Book 4, Trial of Magic. And since the quick release worked so well for Hazel’s series, I plan to do the same for Leila’s series and again release all three books in under two months, which means it will be over a year before you get to follow Leila on her adventures.

Regardless, I hope you’re excited! Thanks for reading, Champions, and thank you for embracing this new story world.

Fun Urban Fantasy Reads!

I’ve loved my foray into Urban Fantasy, and the Hall of Blood and Mercy series! I have one last blog post about the trilogy to post this week–it’s actually an announcement of sorts, but to keep you occupied until then, I have a big list of recommended urban fantasy reads for you!

A huge thank you to my Facebook Champions who helped put this list together! It’s a pretty wide list that includes books in Kindle Unlimited and books that you should be able to borrow from your local library, so there should be something for everyone!

Please note: I haven’t read all of these books, and they do vary a lot on language and level of romance heat, so make sure you check out the reviews so you don’t end up with something you’re not comfortable with!

My Top Picks:

City Between by W. R. Gingell: This isn’t going to come to as a surprise to many of you, but I ADORE this series! It has tricky fae, vain vampires, twisty worlds, witty dialogue, action, and more. It’s so, so good! If you haven’t picked it up yet, you need to. NOW!

Mercy Thompson by Patricia Briggs: This series is the classic, quintessential urban fantasy series! Mercy Thompson is smart, kick-butt, and is pals with some of the baddest werewolves in town. Check this out if you want a masterfully told, classic! (Warning, there is some strong language!)

1-800-Where-R-U by Meg Cabot: This series squeaks the line of urban fantasy–it’s technically more supernatural–but if you want a hilarious/ laugh out loud YA series with mystery and adventure, this series is for you. (For more of an UF flare you could check out Cabot’s “The Mediator,” But 1-800-Where-R-U is funnier. Just sayin’!)

Hall of Blood and Mercy by K. M. Shea: Vampires, wizards, and fae, oh my! This trilogy follows the scrappy wizard, Hazel Medeis, and her misadventures as she gets kicked out of her house and moves in with a pack of vampires. (And yes, I’m just cheeky enough to plug my own series, buwahah.)

Other suggestions:

The Dragon of 23rd Street by Haley Ryan

Obsidian Queen by Shannon Lynn Cook

Aileen Travers by T. A. White

The Guild Codex by Annette Marie

Life After by Julie Hall

Sunshine by Robin McKinley

The Therian Way by Kimberly A Rogers

Young Wizards by Diane Duane

Ridley Kane Chronicles by Rachel Morgan

Relentless by Karen Lynch

The Innkeeper Chronicles by Ilona Andrews

Slouch Witch by Helen Harper

The Steel City Genie by Janeen Ippolito

Dresden Files by Jim Butcher

Immortal Academy by S. L. Morgan

Stray Souls by Kate Griffin

Magic Ex Libris by Jim C Hines

The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman

Fuedlings by Wendy Knight

Minimum Wage Magic by Rachel Aaron

Unenchanted by Chanda Hahn

Borrowed Magic by Stephanie Foxe

Any of Linsey Hall’s books

Dead Spots by Melissa F Olson

The Dragon’s Dream by DC Fergerson

Iron Fey by Julie Kagawa

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HoB&M: the Experiment

The Hall of Blood and Mercy was in many ways an experiment for me. Obviously, because it was a new genre, but since I was doing this as a form of stress relief from all the “fun” I had with Angelique, I wanted to try a few different things I’ve noticed in books and test them out on the trilogy. (I LOVE experimenting and trying new things!)

To begin with, one thing I’ve always noticed some of my favorite series is that they’ll leave behind what makes me fall in love with the series the farther they get from book #1. Naturally, this will happen as a result of character growth–both emotionally and even age wise, like in Harry Potter. It can also happen as a result of the plot thickening–once the big baddie is revealed, things naturally will change, as it is with Angelique’s Fairy Tale Enchantress series.

But I knew going into Hall of Blood and Mercy that I wanted it to be a fun piece of fluff. I didn’t want it to have a huge emotional impact, I designed it to make people laugh and deliver that happy ending that I love to give. So I was determined to stick to what I considered some of the “magic” in book one and carry it on through books two and three. You can see that the most in that there are certain scenes in every book. There are training scenes–though what Hazel is training in varies–every book has a vampire dinner scene, a scene in the Paragon’s private study, and a scene in which Hazel wears a fancy dress–though again the how/why changes in every book.

I was curious if repeating these familiar beats really would be part of the magic of the series, and it seems like some of it was. Between reviews, comments, and conversations I’ve had with you Champions, the Paragon scenes, the vampire dinner scenes, and the dress scenes tended to be cited as favorites. It’s tricky to tell, though, because the scenes in the Paragon’s study were always funny, as were the dinner scenes because Josh always did/said something, and the dress scenes usually were pretty heavy on the romance. So! I don’t fully know if this is something that helped keep the magic of the original or not because the second part might have been more important, and that was….

CHARACTERS!

It always saddens me as an author (and a reader) whenever I have to put characters in the back seat. In particularly this has happened to me in the Second Age of Retha series, where my cast of characters got so huge I can’t even have them all in the same city anymore. So with this trilogy I tried to keep my cast smaller so I could keep pulling in the same characters and you’d keep seeing them instead of letting them fade off into the distance. This was a particular danger for the Wizards in book 2 and the Vampires in book 3.

For the wizards (and the House) it was a bit unavoidable, but I could tell when I was working on my outline that the vampires were going to fade into nothing if I didn’t take drastic measures to keep characters like Josh, Celestina, Gavino, and Rupert front and center. In Magic Unleashed, I engineered them into scenes I normally would have excluded them from just because it would have been easier to skip over them.

The downside was that book 3 got long on me, but I don’t think that was bad from a reader viewpoint as much as I’ve just become a bit allergic to writing longer books these days since that’s ALL I’ve written for the past two years.

This series also was a massive experiment for me in terms of romance, and over all plot.

I created a very loose outline of the entire series using a grid system on a giant piece of wrapping paper. I had a column for each book’s main plot and subplot–ie: unlocking Hazel’s magic & finding the murderer for book 1–and had an extra column just for romance. This helped me define what points Hazel and Killian would reach in their relationship for each book, and it also let me plan ahead and see what kind of clues I had to plant in order to lead in to book 2 and 3. (For instance, you see the actual signet ring from Book two in the second scene of Book one, and the key turn around point for the final battle in book three is discussed very early on in book one as well.)

This actually made writing the series a whole lot easier, and it’s also made me want to kick myself because I am a True Genius  Idiot when it comes to the Timeless Fairy Tale series and just mentally held onto all the stinkin’ plot threads I needed to introduce and intertwine. (Pfttttttt, forget writing stuff down to make it easier to remember–that’s for Smart People.)

But the experiment that gave me the most stress and anxiety–although it was blessedly short lived–was the scene in which Killian drinks Hazel’s blood. Most urban fantasy books fall into two camps: 1) vampires drinking blood is a romantic thing 2) vampires drinking blood is a savage thing. I wanted to create a third version, where vampires drinking blood is a testament of trust and friendship. BUT KILLIAN AND HAZEL BEING ROMANTICALLY INVOLVED MADE THAT SO STINKIN’ DIFFICULT TO WRITE!

For real, there has never been a romance scene that I’ve worried and fretted over more than that blood drinking scene because I needed to keep the moment both romantic AND unromantic! I needed to inspire warm fuzzies because its’ proof that they trust each other and it is, so to speak, the crowning achievement of their relationship. But I also needed to make it obvious the act was more personal and emotional than physical. (This was in no small part vital because I knew I wanted to imply in the epilogue that other wizards were coming to trust the Drakes enough to offer their blood as well.)

And that covers just about everything! I hope you enjoyed this little peek behind the curtains of my brain. Thanks for reading, Champions, and thank you for joining me on this urban fantasy journey!

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Reign of Magic Available in Paperback!

Meg has done it again! She broke through my wall of excuses and wove together the paperback version of Reign Of Magic! (Which, Meg describes as being big enough to beat off a mugger with.)

Amazon.com | All other Stores

The best news is that Amazon has already linked it up to the ebook page, so if you want your own copy just click on the paperback option on the Amazon page.

If you get it, you best prepare to do some weightlifting. This thing is massive. I was skimming through it while lying down and dropped it on my nose. Many regrets were had.

Once again a big thank you to Meg for putting this together, and a huge thank you to all the Champions who were patiently waiting for this. I hope you don’t smack yourself in the face with it!

HoB&M: Characters IV

The time has come for our final deep dive into Hall of Blood & Mercy characters, so today I thought we’d cover the most important character of all…

Aphrodite, the curiously intelligent tea chooser and magical (?) pet!

According to the Paragon, Aphrodite comes from a highly prized line of sphinx cats, and her littermates were all scattered across various realms and universes due to their special abilities. (Who knows, maybe you’ve read about one of her siblings in another book?!)

Aphrodite is the most wondrous, perfect, beautiful, intelligent, remarkable, astute, astounding character in all of trilogy…and I’m just kidding!

Introducing a new Team Member!

Hark, hark, my amazing Champions! I have a new K. M. Shea Team member to introduce: Vin!

Vin is our brand new Enforcer of Fun aka our community manager. She’ll be acting sort of like a cruise event manager on our Discord server, and with her on board we’ll have lots of fun new games, questions, events, and challenges to take part in on a weekly basis! (Eventually, she’ll be posing similar games/questions/challenges to you Facebook Champions as well, so keep an eye out for her!) I consider her our Mastermind of Community Fun! But she’s also going to be in a protective position as well.

I’m lucky enough to have the best readers, and you Champions never fail to humble me with your kindness and the remarkable way our community comes together as a whole. But unfortunately trolls are out there, and as the community grows we’re more likely to have one try to wander through our fun, so consider Vin our friendly, local troll-buster! Vin is the superhero you should contact when you see a troll bothering a fellow Champion, and she’ll TAKE. CARE. OF. IT!

Speaking of Vin, some of you may already know Vin and her penchant for pranks because she’s active on discord and also leads our Heroes of Retha kinship on Lord of the Rings Online, so she is one of you!

As is custom whenever I bring on a new team member, I wanted to ask Vin a few questions so you could all get a chance to know her.

 

Kitty: Thanks for joining us today, Vin!

Vin: Hi! Thanks for having me. I am so thrilled to be a part of the team.

 

Kitty: As you know, we are above all else a reader community. Naturally, that means we’re going to start with the important, heavy-hitting questions… What is your favorite book genre?

Vin: My favorite genre is fantasy, hands down. Give me the prince and princesses, castles, throw in some magic, a healthy dose of sass, and I’m in my happy place.

 

Kitty: Do you have a favorite character trope or type? (In example, a bad-guy-turned-good, a girl who finds out she’s secretly a princess, that sort of thing.)

Vin: Growing up I always dreamed of learning that I was secretly a princess, and that has stuck with me now that I’m older. I could have gone for a little Princess Diaries makeover in high school!

 

Kitty: Oohh, that’s so fun! I love books with that kind of plot hook, too! Next question, what is your most prized book on your bookshelf?

Vin: I have a 1940’s copy of Grimm fairytales that my grandpa would read to me. It’s falling apart and very brittle, but it’s the book that sparked my interest in reading at a young age and my love for fairytales.

 

Kitty: That is so sweet and so awesome! I love books with emotional meaning behind them, they’re like a second home. Okay, back on topic! This question has been required in pretty much every interview I’ve done, so I’m going to pose it to you, too… Coffee or tea?

Vin: Can I choose sugar? Tea would win, but I don’t drink either without a spoonful, or two, or three, of sugar.

 

Kitty: All bow before sugar! I’m mostly a tea girl, but I am a slave to those sugary coffee drinks at cafes. Another vital question, do you have any pets?

Vin: I have shared many pictures of my cat, Link, on Discord. His favorite things include sitting on my lap, lying on my head at night, and meowing when he thinks he’s being neglected. I bet you can’t guess who inspired his name.

 

Kitty: A+ naming skills! Link, for the Champions who aren’t video gamers, is the main character in my absolute favorite video game franchise, the Legend of Zelda. On a more serious note, Rock-Star-Assistant Meg, and Myrrhlynn, and I are all thrilled to have you on the team. But you’ve been a member of the community for a while. About how long have you been a Champion?

Vin: That’s a hard one. I had to go back through my Kindle orders to check. The best I can say is that I joined the ranks in 2017. Funny story: I found this book about a woman who gets stuck in a video game but didn’t know if I wanted to read it. I did and enjoyed the witty banter so much I just had to look into who wrote it. Lo and behold, I was surprised to learn that she was my favorite author using a pen name!

 

Kitty: Haha–that’s awesome! Now, can you give us a tiny hint about some of the things you have planned?

Vin: Well Kitty, they should expect thought provoking questions about the meaning of life… or maybe something along the lines of funny memes and pets. Definitely funny memes about pets.

 

Kitty: Yay for all things pets! I look forward to witnessing your brand of humor! Speaking of which, the Heroes of Retha guild you lead on the game Lord of the Rings Online has become a bit famous for all of its fun pranks and jokes, what’s your favorite prank that you’ve pulled?

Vin: Ha! I do enjoy a good prank. My favorite was when a not to be named Aussie insulted me. I created a character named Istealzstuff and stole everything I could from his house. Then, I sent a cringe worthy grammatically bad ransom note demanding gold. I only confessed after he threatened to report the character to the GMs.

 

Kitty: That is so indescribably fantastic, it warms the cockles of my heart! Can we expect to see some prank-fun of this caliber in our future?

Vin: Pranks are best when no one expects them and when they’re not overdone. That’s all I have to say about that.

 

Kitty: Cool, cool, cool! Welcome to the team, Vin! We can’t wait to see what you dream up for our community!

Vin: Thank you. As I said previously, I am over the moon to be able to get more involved with my fellow Champions. I have many plans and ideas for activities that I hope they will enjoy!

 

Let’s give a round of applause to our new Enforcer of Fun! If you want to hang out with her and our discord crew, you can sign up and join in the fun! I, for one, can’t wait for the good times to begin! Thanks for tuning in, Champions! On behalf of the entire K. M. Shea team, thanks for reading, and we look forward to more fun!

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Donkeyskin: The Similarities Part III

With the release of Magic Unleashed we have closed out the Hall of Blood and Mercy Trilogy, and all the similarities to Donkeyskin have been revealed! (If you haven’t read my sarcastic summary of the original story click here, and then check out The Similarities Part I and Part II to learn more!)

This book probably has the least amount of references and similarities to the Donkeyskin fairytale, because it really focuses on Hazel and Killian and their relationship, which is decidedly different from the original story. But I still have some references!

First, as always, one of Princess Donkeyskin’s dresses makes an appearance! For the third book, I dressed Hazel in the princess’s final and most beautiful dress, a gown that was made to resemble the sun and was crafted with gold. This is also the dress the princess wears when her perverted prince sees her, and the gown she wears when she appears in his court to prove who she is. So this gown means a lot.

As a result, I decided to make the occasion Hazel wears it for important to the plot, and so I constructed the party at Drake Hall.

Next, you finally get to meet the subtle tip of the hat to another key donkeyskin character, Bagel the donkey! Because I was not willing to harm an animal for the sake of making this trilogy more like the original story, I decided to put the donkey in as a subtle nod, and instead I used Hazel’s sealed magic as the ‘disguise’ so to speak–although it’s more on the symbolic level than the original princess who uses a literal donkey skin to physically disguise herself so no one realizes she’s a beautiful princess.

I was delighted with the number of readers who caught the homage to the original donkey–who was responsible for the amazing wealth of Princess Donkeyskin’s kingdom because he pooped gold–as Lelia describes Bagel thinking highly of himself to the point where he believes he could poop gold.

HoB&M: Characters III

Today we’re finally digging into the two characters you’ve been asked to discuss since I started these posts…Hazel Medeis & Killian Drake!

Hazel was a bit of a special case for me as far as heroines go. Typically I create female protagonists that I feel can–through particular facets of their personality–give unique spins on stories. (ie: Elle of Beauty and the Beast is a lot more sarcastic and curious than the average fairy tale heroine, but she faces the same events and emotional high points.) Before I really nailed down the story, though, I began creating Hazel because I wanted her to be ever so slightly different from typical urban fantasy heroines, which was going to affect the events in the plot a lot more. (Meaning the story had to react to her instead of visa versa.)

Of course, Hazel still has snark and sarcasm by the boatloads, and she can kick butt and take names. But at the core of her character, Hazel is what’s called “a paragon,” a trope that is pretty popular in epic fantasy books.

Paragons are typically male characters who operate entirely out of doing what they believe is right. They don’t hesitate in their actions, they are driven by their goals/desires, and they see the world as black and white–or what’s right and what’s wrong.

As you can see, that pretty accurately describes Hazel. She joins the Drake Family not because she wants to survive, but because she believes she owes it to her House. She is willing to forsake her House beliefs and kill to spare innocents and save others, and her parents betrayal in Magic Forged hurts her to the very core because she believes so deeply in trust.

Urban Fantasy heroines are typically the opposite. Either because of the tragedies they’ve lived through, or because they have no other choice, a lot of UF heroines tend to see the world as shades of gray, and occasionally toe the line of good and evil. It works well with the genre’s tone.

I needed Hazel to be the hard line of right and wrong, and to stand her ground as a paragon because I wanted to use her as the standard to raise all the other characters in the series.

But a twisted part of me also wanted to make Hazel a paragon because you don’t see a ton of paragon heroines. They can be tough to write because they have to be entrenched in their right vs wrong beliefs which can make them come off as unemotional. I was able to skate by because Hazel has so many traumatic things happen to her she never gets a chance to really just chill.

And, yes, as soon as I started working on this series I KNEW I had to make Hazel short. 

Sincerely, House Medeis

A huge thank you to all of you Champions for the amazing launch of Magic Unleashed! This is officially the best launch I’ve ever had–which I imagine is partially due to most of the world being stuck indoors, but regardless it’s been so amazing and humbling! The biggest mark I have to show how well the book has done is that for about a full day Magic Unleashed was #36 on Amazon. Not in fantasy, I mean in the entire Kindle Store!! So when I say this has been an amazing launch, I really mean that!

Thank you for being part of it, and an especially big thank you to all the Champions who took time to review the book! I’m so blessed to have our awesome community, and it’s been so fun watching everyone talk and discuss Hazel and her friends.

I’ve got some fun posts coming in the future, but since the book has been out for barely three days, I’m holding back a little longer to give everyone some time to finish reading. But for those of you who are already done, I have a gift!

I’ve uploaded the final short story, Sincerely, House Medeis. (Click here for the PDF!) This story contains spoilers for both Magic Unleashed, and the series in general, so if you haven’t read it yet I suggest waiting!

I hope you enjoy it, and thanks for reading, Champions–I mean that with all sincerity.

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