K.M. Shea's Blog, page 47

This Means War…

Greetings, Champions! The time has come for the last of the Frog Prince/Timeless Fairy Tale themed posts. (At least until 12 Dancing Princesses launches, which sadly has been pushed back to early January since it is turning out longer than expected. Sheesh.) Today we’re going to cover what has been looming on the horizon of the Timeless Fairy Tales’ world since Beauty and the Beast. War.

For starters, I need to make a quick statement about war. It’s not glorious, it’s horrible, awful, and my heart goes out to anyone who has fought in a war or experienced the effects of war. Additionally, the battles fought in the Timeless Fairy Tales won’t reflect human conflicts but the battle between good and evil so it’s not going to be as mind-shatteringly horrible as it is in real life. Okay, let’s proceed.

With the ending of Frog Prince revealing that few surviving Chosen have plotted and grown over the century and are the cause of all the conflicts in the Continent, I had so many of you asking how I thought to do this, and how I was able to draw so many threads together.

The short answer is history. I am a big fan of history–mostly because I find it interesting with all the twists and turns, but also because Scholar Pierre was right. We constantly repeat history, or at least we repeat specific themes in history. But when it comes to starting wars there’s usually a couple of events that will serve as catalysts. 1) Someone royal (or rich, preferably both) is killed or mysteriously goes missing. Many credit the assassination of Franz Ferdinand as starting World War I. King Richard III assumedly killed his two nephews, princes and the rightful heirs to the throne, then dealt with two separate rebellions and was slain in battle. 2) The people themselves rebel. The biggest examples of this are the American Revolution and the French Revolution.

There’s obviously many many more reasons for wars, but these specific two are the ones I’m most familiar with in my admittedly very small knowledge of history. Since I knew I wanted the enemy, the Chosen, to represent a dark ideology (because, spoiler, they’ve only gotten worse every century since Rakel kicked them out of Verglas) I knew I wanted to underline how different the countries are and the politics between them (ie: the strained relationship between Loire and Arcainia, Verglas being in debt to Arcainia, Erlauf not winning any friend competitions due to invading Trieux, Ringsted being unwillingly isolated) and then use the darkness to bring them together.

Similarly, I knew the most effective way to make the countries feel the strain so they would be willing to come together was to put pressure on their people (Remember reason 2) AND the royal families. This was actually pretty easy to ponder through, mostly because of Angelique.

The entire Timeless Fairy Tale series spawned because I read a volume of fairy tales, and thought it would be absolutely wretched/hilarious if all the fairy queens/enchantresses/fairy godmothers who showed up were actually the same person. This worked perfectly into my plan because it meant that all of these horrible/awful things were all happening at the same time, and most fairy tales specifically involve royalty. (Hellloooo, reason #1!)

So how did I figure out how to create all these individual countries and portray the politics between them so it would be more dynamic when I brought them together? The answer is City governments. To run a city, things are broken out into departments, like: library department, parks and rec, Administration, fire/EMS, water and sewer, etc. While the city departments work to do what’s best for the city and to serve it, just as it is in any organization the departments  have differing opinions on how to achieve that. The city will have a set budget, after all, and departments are always desperate to increase their budget so they can do more great things! But that means Fire/EMS–who save people and serve the front lines–might not be very sympathetic to the library director who really wants to get a new computer room. And Administration–who also handles accounting–might get really mad at fire/ems when they accidentally buy too many chemicals and blow their budget.

To be frank, you would often see these departments act like mini-kingdoms. Department heads who got along would sit together during meetings and support each other. If things were tense between departments everyone would be stilted and silent. I saw this up close and in person because for several years I worked as a newspaper reporter who covered a small rural town. (It often seems like the smaller the town, the more charged the politics since everyone is mushed together.)

However, there were always things the departments would work together for no matter what they thought of each other. The Fire/EMS department might have a show-and-tell day at the library, the administration office will sell tickets to the policemen breakfast, employees from water and sewer will run in a marathon held to raise funds for park and rec, and on it goes.

So when I built up my countries I tried to embody the struggles I’ve seen between departments. (And not just in city governments, but in supermarkets, small companies, I’ve found divisions like this in many of the places I’ve worked, the city government is just the easiest one to illustrate.)

So you mix up slightly contentious countries, combine it with strained royal families, add in all the catastrophic events from the fairy tales and what do you have? A continent filled with people who are facing some pretty grim odds. But while you often see the toll my books take on the royal family, you don’t often get to see the average citizens the royals are very concerned with. So how can I show how BAD things are when I can only dialog exchanged between my princes and princesses to deliver bad news? Again, the answer is in Angelique.

Angelique is a great embodiment of the strain the Continent and its people are feeling because she’s been there for almost every calamity in the past 16 years. You can see the progression of how bad things are getting based on her state of mind. (She’s about ready to lose it in Swan Lake and actually yells at a monarch in Sleeping Beauty, something she never would have dared to do back in the days of Puss in Boots.) Angelique also represents the knowledge you the reader have that the characters do not have. (Ariane does not know that Dylan was silent for a summer and sacrificed her pelt to contain a sea witch. Cinderella doesn’t know Elise sewed shirts for her brothers to break their curse.)

Angelique reminds you of all the storms, evil witches, invasions, and ogres the people have had to deal with, which adds darkness to the already black depths of the evil the continent is facing. She is really the key to the entire series, not just because of her power but because of her constant presence. Rakel freed people wherever she went in Verglas. Angelique, however, beats back the darkness so it never has a chance to settle.

But that brings about quite possibly the most important question in the series: How long can Angelique hold out against strain and exhaustion and keep fighting back? How much more can she do?

Thanks for reading, Champions! I hope you found this information dump interesting!

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The Summit

Announcement time! I’m going to be holding my first (official) Facebook Live session TONIGHT (11/15) at 7:30 pm central–or 8:30 Eastern and 5:30 Pacific. (I’ll probably be on anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, so if you can’t jump on right away worry not! I’m holding my first Youtube Live session on Friday (11/17) at 7:30 pm central. (Which is still 8:30 Eastern and 5:30 pacific.)

Additionally, you guys rock, Champions! The Frog Prince has well over 100 reviews, so here is the final short story: The King and Queen of Loire. I hope you like it! It was fun to FINALLY be able to show Lucien’s father and mother. But enough news stuff, on to the post!

There are some serious SPOILERS in this post, so if you haven’t read Frog Prince yet, you’ll want to high-tail it outta here.

Alright, I’ve been hinting at the Summit ever since Cinderella and the Colonel came out, and as you can tell based on Lucien’s little talk, I’ve had the big reveal in place since I wrote Beauty and the Beast, and I’ve been actively presenting it in every book–though it’s most obvious in The Snow Queen books. How on earth did I do? The answer is a looooot of planning.

Seriously, I’ve had this reveal in mind for a long time. It’s changed a bit since I first started the series–originally Lucien was going to be turned into a frog later–during Angelique’s story to be precise–but I decided it was much better to have it happen during the Summit. However, I have had the Chosen reveal plotted out since the very beginning.

And as you can probably tell, everything still hasn’t been shown. There are quite a few more twists that will happen in the next few books, but Frog Prince sets the stage and gives you an accurate idea of what’s really been going on. It also marks the final book in the series’ shared time space. From here on out, things get much more linear. The events of the 12 dancing princesses take place in fall and early winter–pretty recently after Briar beats Carabosso in Sleeping Beauty–and events of Snow White will happen the following spring/summer.

As for the Summit itself, it will give you a little taste of what the final book in the series will be like. Because I’m absolutely insane, the final book in the series will bring back the hero and heroine from nearly every book in the series. Everyone will get their own little segment in the final story, and they’ll be interacting with each other–much as they did during the Summit, but on a far larger scale.

The Summit also introduces you to characters/concepts that will play out in future stories. Princess Astra–the summit representative for Baris–will get her own story in the future, though it will take place AFTER this current story arc. (Meaning you won’t be getting her story for a number of years.) Rider Neera comes from Farset–where the Twelve Dancing Princesses reside–but her role as a Rider also acts as a precursor for another book that will take place after the current story arc as well.

I had a few readers as about the politics of the Summit, more specifically how I came up with the political undertones and all the government references. It was actually really fun for me because I used to be a newspaper reporter, and my beat (the articles I was responsible for) was to cover all the governmental and school board meetings that took place in a small city I lived near. I sat through a lot of meetings, and while my fairy tale world is fantasy, it still needs a government that actually works, so I really drew on my newspaper experience when I was putting everything together.

We still have a few Frog Prince blog posts yet–I want to talk about the morals, and also talk about the warfare/tactical side of the Chosen attack, so we still have some fun topics coming up. Thanks for reading, Champions! I hope you enjoy the story, and I hope to see you at one of the live events!

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Modifying Frog Prince

Previously we covered the original story, so today we’re going to take a look at the big changes I made and why I did them. To start with, I should probably admit that I pulled a bit of a Snow Queen on this story–meaning I took many elements from the original, but I changed it up quite a bit so it barely resembles it. It was partially because I wanted to fit the story in my world, but I also did it because it always bothered me that the original fairy tale never addressed the frog prince’s pushiness, or the princess’s selfishness. But I digress, let’s get started!

Out of all the changes, first–and probably most obvious–is I made my female character a maid, not a princess. This was for several reasons, foremost being all the available princesses at the time are actually already spoken for–the only free ones are the 12 Dancing Princesses and they are stuck in their castle at the time of the summit. A huge factor, however, is that I was sick about writing princesses and I wanted a down-to-earth girl who could call Lucien out on his bad  behavior. (In a way I swapped Lucien and Ariane’s roles. Lucien is far more self-centered, like the princess from the original tale, and Ariane tends to be more on the pushy side–like the frog prince!)

Next up, Ariane is actually the one to retrieve the golden ball from the pond. This was mostly a character personality thing. ‘Cause there was no way Lucien–as he is at the start of the book–was getting in that pond, even if he promised to. Get-‘er-done Ariane, however, was not likely to leave the ball floating on the surface of the pond, particularly when there was a chance Princess Sylvie would fall in. I also wanted to use this moment to contrast the difference in their personalities. Up until the mid-way point of the book, Lucien is pretty selfish and doesn’t care much what everyone else goes through. The lost ball thing was the perfect way to display that. (Plus, I thought I would get extra points for having Sylvie, a princess, lose her ball so it was more similar to the original.)

I did use the whole ‘the frog eats from her plate’ thing that appears in the original fairy tale, but I once again swapped the roles. In this case it’s Lucien who lets Ariane eat off his plate. This has the reverse effect that it had on the princess in the original tale (disgust) and instead makes Ariane see that he really is capable of being kind to others.

Even though the whole “break his curse by throwing him at a wall” thing technically isn’t the true ending of the story anymore, I still wanted to include it because it’s so hilarious, and it actually seems like an appropriate response. (Seriously, go read the story. The frog dude is super creepy when he wants to sleep on the princess’s bed. He totally deserved the wall thing.) So I include it fairly early on in the story, and even have Ariane repeat the gesture a few times to really get the point across.

But Ariane breaks Lucien’s curse by kissing him–which doesn’t appear in the original at all. I again did this because Angelique–who is feeling pretty run-down and vengeful at this point–only knows a handful of ways to counter curses, and one of them is the kiss thing. I also wanted to use the ‘true love’s kiss’ thing because in modern society people use the “kiss a frog to turn him into a prince” analogy sooooo much. It’s so prevalent in books and television clips about the frog prince, that I was actually shocked when I first started researching the story and learned that kissing was never mentioned.

Finally, I did include–to a certain extent–Henry the valet’s part in the story. I decided to make him a taciturn veteran instead of rather dramatically needing iron bands around his heart because–let’s face it–Severin and Princess Sylvie were probably the only ones who were sad to see Lucien as a frog. AKA: the Crown Prince totally deserved what he got!

And that’s all for today, Champions! I hope this shed some light on my reasoning. Thanks for reading, and have a great day!

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Frog Prince: the original

Greetings, Champions! You have just about closed in on the next freebie, so I’m giving it to you early! Woohoo! And the short is: Dressing Up! This is a really cute one with Ariane hanging out with a bunch of B&B characters, so I hope you like it!

Today, in celebration of the release of Frog Prince, we’re going to go over the original story. Before we get started I would like to note that I really gutted this fairy tale when I created my own version. It still has most of the important parts, but I broke them up and made some pretty drastic changes because 1) both of the main characters in the original story are pretty detestable 2) Lucien’s arrogant personality and my world itself wouldn’t have allowed for me to completely adapt the story.

Okay, are you ready? Let’s dive in!

The “original” Frog Prince story was recorded by the Brothers Grimm, but it was known as “the Frog Prince or Iron Henry,” and it actually has two different endings running around. I wasn’t able to track down the year the original story was released, but the modified version (the alternate ending that is now considered the “true” ending) was released in 1823 by Edgar Taylor.

All versions of Frog Prince begin with a young princess who ventures outside and sits next to a well (Grimm version) or a spring (Taylor version). She has a golden ball that she throws up in the air and then catches, but while playing she fails to catch her ball and the thing drops into the deep well/pond.

The princess concludes she won’t be able to retrieve it, and declares she would give up her clothes, pearls, anything to have this ball back. (It seems to me someone needs to learn the evils of materialism. And impulsive decisions. I mean, really?!)

A frog hears the princess and asks her what is wrong. The princess nastily calls him ugly and explains what happened. The frog offers to retrieve the ball if she lets him eat from her plate and sleep in her bed, and treats him like a companion.

This should have been the princess’s first warning, because any living creature that demands a payment like that obvious has some wacko motives, but the princess rather craftily realizes the frog has no way to make her carry out this payment as he is stuck in his well/spring, so she agrees. (She’s actually quite verbally abusive to the frog, and insults him a lot.)

The frog retrieves the ball, and as soon as the princess recovers it she runs off before he has a chance to stop her or remind her of her promise.

The princess is pretty happy because she thinks she’s home free, but unfortunately for her the following day when she is at dinner with her father the King, there’s a knock on the castle door. The princess answers the door (You’ve got some lax security there, oh King) and sees frog sitting outside waiting for her. Frightened, she slams the door shut and returns to dinner. Her father asks her why she looks so frightened, and she explains the promise she made to the king.

Next the frog shouts this weird poem-ditty through the door like a total creeper-stalker, and the King tells the princess she better open up the door and keep her promise. So the princess goes and gets the frog, who gets super pushy and demands that he sit on the table and she move her plate so he could also eat from it.

I understand this is just an artist’s mental image of what happened…but that spring/fountain/well does not look THAT deep.

When dinner is over the frog demands that she take him to her bedroom to sleep in her bed with her. (This would be a great time to step in, Dad!) The princess doesn’t want to, but the king tells her she must keep her promise. (Okay, that’s not what I meant when I said step in!)

So the princess carries the frog with two fingers because she doesn’t want to touch him, and when they get to her room instead of putting the frog on her bed, she throws him against the wall. Surprisingly, this makes the frog transform into his true form: a prince!

In the modified version, which is now usually considered the true ending, she lets him sleep in her bed with her and goes through this torture for THREE DAYS before the frog transforms into the prince he really is. Also, the modified version says the prince was turned into a frog by a vindictive fairy whereas the original gives no reason for the transformation.

The following day the Prince and Princess come down to the castle entrance where Henry–the prince’s faithful servant–is waiting with a carriage. Henry had been so sad when the prince was turned into a frog he had to have three iron bands placed around his heart so it wouldn’t break. When he sees his master fully restored, he is so happy that the iron bands break. Henry then drives the prince and princess back to the prince’s lands.

So that’s the original fairy tale! In spite of popular belief, there was no kissing at all involved in the story. Though I do have to say this is a very rare case in which I think the two main characters actually deserve each other. The prince is waaayy beyond pushy, but the princess is little more than a harpy as she constantly insulted the prince when he was a frog.

Anyway! I hope you all found that amusing, Champions. Until next time–when we discuss the ways I adapted the story!

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First Short: Defense Lessons

Hi-ho there, Champions! You’ve unlocked the first short for Frog Prince, Defense Lessons, in record time!

It’s still a little early for the themed blog posts since Frog Prince only launched yesterday, but I wanted to get the short out so instead you guys get this short post! I have to say a big thank you to everyone who has left a review! I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed Ariane and Lucien’s story AND the progression of the “big picture” part of the story. It has been SO HARD not giving any part of the big reveal away–especially since some of you have been sniffing up clues for years.

There’s only two fairy tales left for this arc (12 Dancing Princesses, and Snow White) and then the series will wrap up with Angelique’s story–which will span two books. So technically there’s four books left to tie up the entire arc, and it will officially end in 2019. But! Worry not! Once this story arc finishes I’ll still be writing fairy tales–they’ll just be more in the model of The Snow Queen series. (So the fairy tale will span 2 or 3 books, and will have a consistent cast of characters.) And yes, as many of you have guessed, two of those stories will be The Queen of Hearts and the Girl and the Glass Coffin.

Frog Prince Launch

Frog Prince is now available! I’m normally pretty tight-lipped about the story at launch, but that’s especially true for Frog Prince given the material that’s covered in it, so not a single word from me! (At least until you Champions get a chance to read it!)

I did want to let you guys know that I’m hoping–next week–to host a short live video event on either Facebook or Youtube so we can chat about the book and I can answer any questions you might have! If you have a preference for which site you want me to use, please leave a comment!

That’s it for today! I really hope you enjoy Frog Prince–I can’t wait to see what you all think!

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Frog Prince: Available to Pre-order now!

Happy Halloween, Champions! Frog Prince is now available for pre-order, and has a launch date of 11/3–this Friday! I’m really anxious to see what you all think of the book–it pulls back the curtain on some of the larger world-issues.

As usual, I am going to run a review specials for Frog Prince! Reviews are really important for authors. They help a lot in terms of opening up doors for marketing, and they also provide useful feedback for me and for possible/interested readers. So as a thank you for reviewing, I’ll release Frog Prince extras when we hit big review landmarks! (I count reviews from Amazon.com, the UK Amazon site, the Australian Amazon site, and Goodreads!)

This time I’m releasing three shorts!

Defense Lessons: 4 page short story: 40 reviews: locked
Dressing Up: 6 page short story: 75 reviews: locked 
The King and Queen of Loire: 12 page short story: 110 reviews: locked

Finally, Beauty and the Beast is temporarily on sale for 99 cents to celebrate The Frog Prince’s release! I’ll probably keep it at that price for roughly a month before hiking it back to its regular price of $2.99.

That’s all for today. Until Friday, Champions, have a lovely week!

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Cover Reveal: Frog Prince

It’s time…for the Frog Prince Cover Reveal!

Ta da! Another masterpiece brought to you by Myrrhlynn! This is the first time a Timeless Fairy Tale features the heroine AND the hero–though I don’t think Lucien would be pleased to learn it’s him in his frog form. Myrrhlynn actually specifically picked this photo because the girl was looking down, so she could make it look like Ariane was looking at froggy Lucien. Thanks, Myrrhlynn, for another beautiful cover! (And for the laugh, hahah it warms the cockles of my heart to see Lucien turned low. Buwahah!)

I think it’s especially fun that Lucien is on the cover because you get to see a lot of the book from his perspective. I often include a handful of scenes from the hero’s perspective–it gives you a chance to see their thoughts about the stories’ events, and also their feelings for the heroine–but since Lucien grows a lot during this story, his point-of-view is featured much more predominantly than any other hero before him. (Though the majority of the story is still from Ariane’s POV.)

I still don’t have a release date for this, but I think it’s safe to say it will be less than three weeks! The delays are not so much from the editing process as much as it is the fact checking process. Since this story involves so many old characters, the work that goes into making sure everyone is portrayed correctly is CRAZY. (Seriously, every time someone goes through it I realize there was another detail I forgot to add or a facet of a character I incorrectly portrayed.)

That’s all for today, Champions! Have a lovely weekend, and thanks for reading!

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Preparations and Flags

Preparations for Frog Prince continue! I have all the extras written up–they just have to go through a round of editing–and I had a lot of fun with these particular extras, so I really hope you all enjoy them. So far it looks like we are on schedule for a late October/early November release!

Assistant Rock Star Meg has begun the awful daunting task of going through all my manuscripts and reformatting them. This is a bigger task then it sounds because it just so happens I’m horrible at consistency, so each manuscript is out of order in its own, unique way. Hopefully we’ll be able to get a few new paperbacks out before Christmas–in particular Wild Swans and Rumpelstiltskin. Thanks for your patience, Meg!

Additionally, I have some new, beautiful fan art to display! Champion Mary Theresa created something I’m particularly gleeful about: the flag standards for Erlauf, Arcainia, and Verglas!

     

I have to commend Mary’s attention to detail as the standards are really only mentioned one time each in the entire series and she perfectly nailed the colors and country symbols. (I also like that she made each shield different!) But I think this is also an incredibly high compliment. As an author, it’s a little easier for me to flesh out characters and scenes for you all as readers, but countries are on a totally different level. So I’m so happy that Mary was interested enough in the countries and their standards that she decided to make these. (Thanks Mary!)

That’s all for today! Thanks for reading, Champions, and have a lovely weekend!

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Second Age of Retha: a Satire?

Good day to you, Champions! Today I thought I would talk a bit about my A. M. Sohma Second Age of Retha series. I don’t intend to do this too much as I am much more low key with my pen name, but when I have a new A. M. Sohma I still want to give a little behind-the-scenes-peek. Unfortunately when Desperate Quest came out, I was trying to write Frog Prince, so I didn’t have a chance to write anything. But I can remedy that today!

I’ve been a long time video gamer–of both computer games and gaming systems–and one of my all time favorite books is Heir Apparent, a story in which a teenage girl gets stuck in a single-player game. But what actually motivated me to write the Second Age of Retha series wasn’t so much video games, but Diana Wynne Jones’ Tough Guide to Fantasyland. Tough guide is a fictional book, but it’s actually more of a satire-encyclopedia that goes over the many cliches presented in fantasy and pokes fun at them.

Retha–my game world–itself is a mixture of Middle Earth, Hyrule, and all the other fantasy lands I’ve read about or played in. I tried hard to make Retha as cliche as possible, because that gave me a lot of room for humor. Don’t get me wrong, I still wanted the game to be beautiful so a lot of effort went into imagining the landscapes and cities, but you have your typical races (elves, dwarves, fae) and typical baddies (dragons, spiders, goblins) all featured in areas you would expect.

Beautiful or not, I still made it my mission to tackle those previously mentioned cliches. In example, when you read a fantasy book the characters are usually all very calm and grim as they fight their way through the spiders or the dragons, and kill every last one of them. In reality, ain’t nobody got time for that! Seriously, who would try to take on every dragon in a cave when you can just sneak through, get what you need, and then run like crazy to get out of there? That’s more the angle I was going for–how people would actually react versus how they think they would react.

Another cliche I picked on was female armor. In both games and books, it’s pretty common for a female to have armor or clothes that flash her stomach or her legs. As a tomboy, I can attest that wearing something like that is the fastest way ever to get scratched up and bruised. Seriously, I climbed a tree in a swimming suit once and I can’t say I recommend it, and  heroines are supposed to be scrambling up mountains like that?! PFT! No.

But the book isn’t all cliches. I did do some innovating with the game system itself. The average litRPG is heavily invested in stat building. (The idea being when your character levels up, you get a certain amount of points and can choose to invest them in different categories like strength and agility.) However, I haven’t played many games where you decide on your characters stats–that’s more of a Dungeons and Dragons thing–and many of the games I love are heavy on skills and let you decide what sort of skills you want your character to learn.

I mulled the idea over, and decided that if I was playing a game that felt real, I would probably want the game to reflect reality a little more, so I thought it would be an awesome game mechanic if skills were determined by how you played. This isn’t an entirely new idea as there are a handful of games out there that will adjust your characters stats based on how you play, however, I did do something new by bringing in the game’s ‘life skills.’

Life Skills are a great way for the game to balance out characters so no one is too powerful or completely useless, but I was particularly inspired to make them because I thought it would be hilarious to receive useless skills in a video game world. In epic fantasy books and LitRPG books, characters are forever receiving these amazing all powerful spells and skills. (I’m guilty of it too–it’s all over The Snow Queen series) No one, however, receives the equivalent of a consolation prize. And if you think about it, probability speaking, someone along the way should receive dud skills/spells. So Kit became the target of my twisted sense of humor.

Whew! I suspect that is more than enough for today. Thanks for reading, Champions, and have a fantastic day!

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