K.M. Shea's Blog, page 44

Interviews and Fan Art

Happy weekend, Champions! I have some fun stuff to share with you in this post.

For starters, aspiring author M L Moos interviewed me via email, and last week posted the interview on her adorable website! She asked me some really good questions, so if you want to check it out, click here! (Turns out we’re, like, book buddies!)

Next, we have some new fanart!

Dylan and her Kelpie by Tori Rose

This picture of Dylan and her Kelpie is by Tori Rose, and I actually laughed out-loud when I read the caption and saw Dylan’s expression. (Such a Dylan thing!) She really nailed Dylan’s hair–and the Kelpie of course. But even the wave is really awesome! (I mean, water–to me–seems like it would be impossibly hard to draw, so hats off to you for that one, Tori!)

I’m actually quite chuffed, Besides Cami’s painting of Dylan, no one has done fanart for Dylan before, and she’s one of my favorites to write given her playful personality and her preoccupation with food. So thanks again, Tori, for the fun artwork–it has joined the place of honor with all the other amazing stuff you Champions have sent me in the Fanart gallery!

And to wrap up the post, I finished the first round of edits on the STILL-as-of-yet-unnamed-sequel-to-Red-Rope-of-Fate, so now it’s off to the jumble of editors who will help me find all the errors! I am hoping for a mid July release if all goes well. Next, though, I have to work on a secret mini-project….buwahahah! (More on that to come.)

Thanks for reading today, Champions! I appreciate your faithfulness and support. Have an amazing weekend–I hope you have time to read a good book!

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Fan Art and Fan Photos

Hello Champions! Today, I’m excited to share a new piece of fan art of Quinn from the 12 Dancing Princesses! It’s especially fun because this is the first fan art I’ve received of this story.

The artist is Rhapsody. And I think she did an amazing job–especially with Quinn’s clothes and hair. I love the little details, like the braids and the stitching on her boots! Thanks for sharing your work with us Rhapsody!

I love receiving fan art–it’s so fun to see how others bring these characters to life–so feel free to send it to me if you’re ok with me adding it to the fan art gallery page!

I also love it when you send me photos of my books “in the wild” (paperbacks or your ereaders displaying the cover).

I love it so much that I added all the photos I was tagged in on Instagram and elsewhere to my Champion Images Pinterest board. I would love to add yours if you have one! (If you tag me in the photo on Instagram I will probably see it, but you can message me to make sure.)

Finally, a special thanks to all the Champions who added comments to my last blog post asking for your favorite quotes. It was fun to see the quotes you liked best and MyrrhLynn is pumped to turn as many of them into images as possible. There should be a new quote image on Pinterest every day in June so check the board throughout the month to see what’s new.

And that’s all I have for today. Thanks for reading, Champions! Have a lovely day.

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K. M. Shea Quotes

Hellooooo Champions! Today we’re talking about pinterest again…and I intend to beg you for help.

For those of you who don’t know, in the last few months I joined pintrest! I have a board for fairy tale retellings, beautiful castles, fairy tale dresses, and more. Myrrhlynn (my cover artist) has done most of the work as she creates the graphics for the book quotes board–my most popular board. The book quotes board features images like the one below.

Myrrhlynn selects favorite quotes from each book and makes a graphic to match them. As I mentioned, these are the most popular things I’ve pinned. There’s just one problem…we’re running out of quotes.

The easiest way for Myrhlynn to select quotes is to go to the book’s goodread page, and go through the quotes you guys have underlined there. (She can’t use every quote–some are too long, and quotes that have two people talking are a little more difficult to convey–so it’s useful to have a bunch in a list like that.) Unfortunately, she’s worked her way through most of the favorited/underlined quotes. (If you have a goodreads account, if you underline a book quote on your Kindle, it automatically links up and populates on the book’s goodreads page.)

In particular there are NO favorited quotes/lines in Goodreads for Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Frog Prince, and Twelve Dancing Princesses! So, here is where we could use your help. Tell us your favorite quotes–you can either add them to goodreads via the underline method on your Kindle, or you can share them in the comments down below!

And while we’re looking for book quotes from the later Timeless Fairy Tales books, you can submit a quote from any story–Princess Ahira, King Arthur, Robyn Hood, all of them!

I’ve had a lot of fun going through the quote images to see what lines you Champions like best–and it’s also fun to see how Myrhrlynn designs the graphic to match the quote. It’s also been a big surprise to see how popular the quote images are on my pintrest account. I thought for sure the fairy tale retellings board would be a huge hit, but what’s the most popular thing I’ve ever posted? A book quote from Rumpelstiltskin! (Stil would feel much better about losing out to Merlin if he knew about the book quote, I’m sure.)

Thank you so much for your help–and I can’t wait to see what lines you like the most! Thanks for reading, Champions!

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Red Rope of Fate Sequel

Depending on if you follow me on other social media platforms, you may–or may not–be aware that I am currently working on a sequel to Red Rope of Fate. (Woohoo!) It doesn’t have a title yet–I can’t tell you, Champions, how much I hate coming up with titles–but I’m already over halfway through writing it!

The story takes place approximately three years after Red Rope of Fate, and the protagonists are two character’s you’ve already met. (Or at least briefly seen.) Prince Benjimir of Calnor, and the elven Princess Gwendafyn of Lessa. Kitty, you might be thinking, Benjimir was a VILLAIN in the previous book! How can he be a protagonist? Champions…I give you the most wanted archtype you voted: Villain turned hero.

This book has been a real blessing for me. Writing The Revived (Book three in my Second Age of Retha series) mentally bankrupted me because it turned out to be so long and massive. This sequel, however, is much lighter and fluffier–which is something I haven’t been able to write in ages as the Timeless Fairy Tales are really ramping up in terms of tension and complexity. (No complaints here–I love that sort of thing–but it does get tiring to write after a while because I spend so much of myself completing the stories.)

I’m hoping to finish it (it being the as-of-yet-untitled-sequel) and get it edited in time for a mid July release. I do hope you guys like it. Gwendafyn and Benjimir are a much more sarcastic/jaded couple than Tari and Arion, but they have some of the cutest interactions too.  (And yes, you get to see quite a bit of Tari and Arion in the story. And Thad, Wilford, and Grygg. And Seer Ringali. And King Petyrr. Basically, EVERYONE IS BACK!!)

That is all for today, Champions! I hope you have a lovely week, and I would like to leave you with an important question: which character(s) are you most excited to see again?

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2018 Hero Interview

Greetings, Champions! I’m going to keep this short and sweet and cut to what you most want to hear, the interview with Merlin, Emerys, Friedrich, and Farrin is finished!

You can read the PDF of the Hero Poll Interview here!

I hope it makes you laugh! I had a lot of fun going through your questions and sorting out what the boys would say. It was a lot of fun, and hopefully we can do it again in the future!

Also, a big thank you to everyone who submitted questions and/or voted in the polls! It’s a lot of fun to do this, and it’s really interesting to see slight changes as time passes. (I wasn’t sure anyone would ever rip Rumpelstiltskin from his top place!)

I’ll cut it off here so you can go read. But thanks for reading, Champions. I hope you enjoy the interview, and have a lovely week!

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Fairy Tale Book Promotion Going on Now!

Happy Friday, Champions! The character interview is FINISHED! It just needs to be edited and then I can pop it up here next Monday, but that wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about today.

I was invited to join a slew of authors who have banded together for the weekend to create a list of fairy tales that are either priced at 99 cents, or are free via KU! There’s some really great looking books, as well as some old friends. (Snow Queen is there under the Free in KU section, and Kenley Davidson–whom you might remember from our joint Entwined Tales series–is there with Traitor’s Masque as well!)

If you’re looking to snag some new stories, you might want to check it out. Click here to go see the list!

Please note: I haven’t read most of the books listed, so I can’t really comment on the content and level of romance, but I can say that none of them are erotica. There are a few books in this list that I’ve been meaning to read for awhile, so I’m hoping this gives me the motivation to finally dig in.

That’s all for today! I hope you have a lovely weekend–and if you can recommend any of the books on the list leave a comment below with the titles! (I’ll need some new books for summer, too!)

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Paperbacks Ho!

Ahoy, there! Thank you to all of my Champions who have patiently waiting for paperbacks of their favorite books to be available. I am thrilled to announce that almost every single book I’ve written now has a paperback available!

It’s so beautiful!

Yes, you’re seeing that right! Every Timeless Fairy Tale book, the two MBRC novels, and all the King Arthur books are in print! (Additionally, both The Luckless and Desperate Quest are available in paperback as well, they’re just not pictured.)

This was a huge undertaking, and I owe Rockstar Assistant Meg and my cover artist, Myrrhlynn, a round of applause for the massive amount of effort they put into this. Meg formatted every single book, and Myrrhlynn designed the covers and kept the books on track as they went through the submission process. So if you’re excited about the books, you have these two to thank!

Side note: Princess Ahira is shown in the photo, but it’s not available quite yet! It should be available in the next week. We’re just going through some final quality checks at the moment.

As you probably noticed in the photo of my bookshelf, the King Arthur individual books 1-6 are only available as part of the 3-packs. The individual books are just too short to print alone. But the good news is most of the King Arthur extras are also slipped into the three packs, so you get quite a bit of extra content!

Sorry this is somewhat old news–most of these books have been available for weeks, but there have been problems with Amazon playing hide and go seek with some of them and they would randomly disappear from the store. I was waiting to make this announcement until I was confident they would be available for you to buy!

To all the Life Reader fans: no, that book is not in paperback yet because I want to do a edit/proofread pass to clean it up before it goes in print. Sadly, it is going to be at least two years before I can get to this, but it will eventually be available in paperback!

And sadly, for all my Robyn Hood fans out there, no, that series isn’t in paperback and I don’t have any plans to publish it in paperback at this time. Sorry! It also needs to go through an edit before it can get the paperback treat, and with 2019 being the year of Angelique’s stories, my schedule for the next two years is crazy.

And that is it for today! I’m making progress on the interview, so you can expect to see it early next week. I’ve had a lot of fun writing it, so I hope you all enjoy it! In the meantime, have a beautiful, fun-filled week, and, as usual, thanks for reading! (Oh, and if you want to buy a paperback, just search for the book on Amazon and when you visit the book’s page you’ll see there is an ebook option and a paperback option!)

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Tired Panda Reviews the Poll!

So for those of you who don’t know, when I’m at my worst–whether it is because I’m sick or just exhausted–I liken myself to a panda. (Because even when sad, pandas are cute and cuddly, where as in reality I more closely resemble road kill which is far less inviting.) So today we have the return of tired panda!

Why am I so tired? For starters I finally FINISHED THE REVIVED. I finished it late Friday night, and let me tell you that was a tough book. The Second Age of Retha series, and even The Revived itself, were fun, but it was the book length that killed me. Since I started writing full time, my books always fall in the range of somewhere between 65,000 words (which is the length of Beauty and the Beast) and 80,000 words. (The Desperate Quest and Heart of Ice are both roughly 80,000 words.) The Revived is a whopping 111,000 words. And that’s before editing.

I haven’t written a book that long in years. Life Reader is actually longer than that, but I wrote that book of the course of approximately four years. I slammed the Revived out in about two months, and the book nearly beat me at the end. I did manage to triumph, but for that last week of writing Perfect Dog was pretty upset as I kept taking over her various dog beds because they were on the ground and closer to me than the couch–which would have required me hauling my carcass across the room to reach. Needless to say, I learned a lot from this process. (Namely, DON’T DO THAT AGAIN!!)

So, as you can probably guess, the Hero Poll interview hasn’t been worked on yet due to The Revived taking so long to finish, but I did want to assure you in the meantime that I will still complete it at some point. But!! We can finally review the results of the Most Wanted Hero poll!

This year there were 2,392 votes cast–which means 598 of you voted!

The Most Wanted Hero is…drum roll please… “Villain turned good guy” with 277 votes!

In second was “Intimidating, brooding, gruff, stoic guy who secretly has a heart of gold” with 230 votes. “Sherlock-type genius (Kick@$$-academic)” Took third with 203 votes, “A rival to the heroine (competes with her)” took fourth with 198 votes, “Guy who hides his genius behind a funnyman/class clown persona” came in fifth with 180 votes, and “Anti-hero–sketchy morals, dubious actions, still a hero in the end (Artimus Fowl)” came in sixth with 170 votes.

The one thing I really appreciated–and was honored by–is that this year a number of you said you specifically voted for heroes that you thought would be interesting to see me pull off with my cast of strong female characters. The Anti-Hero seemed to be the one most people voted for out of sheer curiosity, but a lot of you also called out the “rival” entry as being an interesting twist as well.

As an author, stuff like that is a little more fun for me to play with because it does mean taking a stereotype I wouldn’t typically go for and fitting it into the context of my writing.

That villain turned good guy does make me sweat, though. I had to plan hardcore for making Farrin turn good in The Snow Queen. Trying to do it again without it feeling like a copy/paste repeat would be a serious challenge.

Speaking of which, this year’s poll did give me a couple of ideas for future projects, but sadly I won’t be able to tackle any of them for a while due to the Second Age of Retha and Angelique’s series hogging the 2018 and 2019. But I will be thinking about this poll as I design the heroes for my next few books, so thank you for taking the time to vote!

So tell me, Champions, are you surprised by the results? Which of the top winners are you most excited about? (Personally, I really like the Sherlock-type genius, the rival, and the anti-hero entries.)

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Insert Hold Music Here

Hello Champions! My original plan for today’s post was to sum up the poll winners and release the questions for the top heroes, but I ran into a bit of a scheduling snafu last week. I was supposed to finish The Revived, book 3 of the Second Age of Retha series, on Friday or Saturday. Buuuut the book is turning out to be much longer than anticipated, so I’m hustling to get the last few chapters done and the Q&A session with Merlin, Emerys, Friedrich and Farrin is going to be delayed until it’s finished. But, I still have some fun updates to share!

Firstly, I’ve finally launched a Timeless Fairy Tale boxset, (pictured above) which contains the first three fairy tales: Beauty and the Beast, Wild Swans, and Cinderella! This boxset doesn’t have any extra content, it’s just a cheaper way to buy the first three books in the series. The goal is to use it for promotions and giveaways, but in order for the boxset to qualify for various promotional sites, it needs a few more reviews. If you have read these books and you have a moment, could you please fill out a review? It will be a huge help to me and hopefully bring new readers into the series. (Click here for the book link) Thank you so much for your support!

As some of you might noticed, I now have a pintrest button at the top of the website as I have finally gotten an official account and a made some really fun boards. You can check out my account here, I have a board for fairy tale book retellings, video game jokes, castles, and–my favorite–some beautiful quote images Myrrhlynn whipped up for me! (You can see an example below.)

Although I’ve skulked around pintrest for years now, this is really my first attempt at having an “official” page, so I’m still stumbling around a bit. As I told the Facebook Champions, I hoping some of you guys are more knowledgeable about it so I can stalk  I mean follow you in hopes that some of your experience will rub off on me.

 

That’s it for today! Hopefully I can get The Revived finished in the next few days. This is the third time I’ve overshot the production schedule with it due to its unexpected length–It’s going to be the longest book I’ve released since Life Reader. By a lot. But I’m so close to the end, I can almost taste it! As usual, thanks for reading, and an extra big thank you if you took the time to review! I hope I get to see you in Pintrest–and don’t be afraid to follow me. I’ll follow you back…as soon as Pintrest stops accusing me of being a robot.

2018 Most-Wanted Hero Poll

It’s time for the second half of the annual poll: the most-wanted hero poll! Here’s how it works.

I took the suggestions you guys gave me over the last few weeks, and I compiled them into this poll. To keep it from being horribly long I had to group a lot of the suggestions together, so you likely won’t see your exact suggestion. This year, you can vote for FOUR different hero-types you most want to see in a book! This poll will close Friday, April 6th.

Reminder: I use this poll as a way to monitor what you guys like. Depending on my book launches for the year, I may not be able to use the top voted suggestions, or the hero types might not fit in with the themes/heroine character I’ve designed for a book. This is supposed to be mostly for fun–but I do try to pay attention to what you Champions say through this poll.

Thanks for joining in the fun. I can’t wait to see what guys you Champions vote to the top this time!

 

View Poll

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