K.M. Shea's Blog, page 53

The Princess Who Chased Sheep

Today marks the release day of Once Upon a Happy Ending! I was given an advanced copy, and I haven’t finished it yet, but I particularly loved the Rumpelstiltskin, Goose Girl, and Rapunzel retellings. The stories do contain varying levels of violence and romance, but they all have that promised happy ending.

Just as a reminder, this Friday the other authors and I are hosting a Facebook Live Event! There will be authors on there from morning until evening, but I’ll be on there from 9 am to 11 am Eastern time. (You don’t have to be on the whole time, just check in when you like. And PLEASE check in. I get awkward when I have no one to talk to.)

Now, as many of you know, I absolutely adore taking the original fairytales my stories are based on, and ripping them apart summarizing them in a post. In celebration of the anthology’s release, today we’re going to take a look at the Dirty Shepherdess–which is the original Grimm Brothers fairy tale I based my story, The Princess Who Chased Sheep, on.

Our story revolves around a clever princess. We know she is clever, even though all evidence points to the contrary, because the Grimm brothers tell us so no less than six times.

One day her father, the king, approaches her and her older sister and asks how much they love him. Her older sister tells the king that he is the apple of her eye. The king is very pleased. When the clever princess tells him she loves him as she loves the salt that seasons her food, the father unexpectedly has a very poor reaction. (I say unexpected because the first daughter also compared him to a food item, but apparently he’d rather be an apple than salt.) The king is so enraged, that he orders the clever princess to leave the palace. He specifies that she is not allowed to take any method of transportation, and she may only take what she can carry.

So the princess dresses in a maid’s uniform, packs a small satchel with a fancy dress and a king’s ransom in jewelry—this is the only time in which I do really think she is clever—and makes her way through her father’s kingdom, searching for work.

Eventually the princess is hired as a shepherdess, and is there for several months before she gets homesick and is struck with the

Yes, that looks like a really great dress to wear when one is responsible for a flock of animals. +5 Intelligence.

sudden desire for her old life. Naturally she decides to strip in front of the sheep and dress in her fancy gown with all her jewelry.  (Because who wouldn’t think that’s a great idea?) Not long after she changes a prince waltzes through the meadow where the sheep are grazing, and instantly falls in love with her.

The clever princess runs off, and the lovestruck prince is unable to track her down. He goes to the village and asks everybody about the beautiful maiden in the meadow. The villagers laugh at him, and tell him the only female up there is the dirty shepherdess.

The lovestruck prince, thinking some kind of witchcraft is at work, returns home. However, he has fallen so deeply in love with our clever princess, though he has never spoken to her and knows nothing about her, that he begins wasting away and is unable to eat. Eventually he makes a request to have the shepherdess bake a loaf of bread for him. (How he jumped from thinking there was witchcraft at work, to wanting the dirty shepherdess who he has never set eyes on to make him bread, I still don’t know.)

The so-called clever princess decides that when she bakes the bread and kneads it, it would be a splendid idea to wear all of her royal rings. (For anyone who hasn’t ever kneaded bread, it is an incredibly sticky process, and the dough gets all over your hands.)

The lovestruck prince bites into the loaf of bread and almost swallows one of the clever princess’s rings, which came off when she was kneading the dough. (How did she miss that?) The prince, proving to be as equally clever/dim as the princess, declares that he will marry the maiden whose finger fits the ring. (No, he didn’t figure out whose ring it was, as you will see in a moment.)

Maidens come far and wide, but none are able to put the ring on their finger. Eventually the clever princess/dirty shepherdess is called for, and is naturally able to slip the ring on. Mr. Lovestruck-the-Idiot still doesn’t recognize her, but he declares he will fulfill his promise. The clever princess asks for water and a nice dress, and gets all cleaned up. When she appears before the prince and his family, she once again looks like a princess, so the prince flings himself at her feet and begs her to marry him.

She agrees, and after getting permission from her father–who to his credit never ceased to regret his harshness since exiling her–they hold the wedding. The clever princess’s father and sister attend, and during the banquet the clever princess instructs the kitchen servants to serve her father unseasoned food that contains no salt.

When the king makes faces, the clever princess asks him what is wrong, and he explains how tasteless the dishes are. The princess wastes no time in pointing out how delightful salt makes food taste, and yet he grewn angry with her for comparing him to salt. The king repents, embraces his passive-aggressive daughter, and is then given seasoned food which he proclaims to be the best he has ever had.

The end.

I really enjoyed this fairy tale as the main component of the story is not the love the prince and princess share, but the love the princess has for her father. I also enjoyed the absolute ridiculousness–like wearing rings when making bread–and I had a really fun time trying to shore up those aspects of the story. It was also quite refreshing because generally any fairy tale that includes cleverness as a component stars a male character. Or a cat as we saw in Puss in Boots.

I hope you check out the anthology—it is available in Kindle Unlimited—and enjoy my retelling! As you probably expect, my lovestruck prince is much smarter than the dunce presented here. Thanks for reading, Champions, and have a great day!

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Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween, Champions! I hope you all had fun this holiday and with Trick-or-Treating! I dressed my dog up like a bumblebee when I was handing out candy. It was more fun than it should have been.

I’m happy to announce that in the spirit of the day, I am releasing a new Magical Beings’ Rehabilitation Center freebie, Trick or Treat. It’s a fun, lighthearted piece of fluff that will hopefully make you laugh and chortle along with Morgan.

That’s it for today, Champions! Thanks for reading, and enjoy the short!

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Once Upon a Happy Ending

Good day to you, my lovely Champions!

Today the fantasy/fairy tale anthology I’m a part of, Once Upon A Happy Ending, is available for pre-order! The anthology costs 99 cents, it will be available on Kindle Unlimited, and it features fifteen short stories from sixteen authors. It will be released on November 2. As some of you might recall, I submitted a retelling of The Dirty Shepherdess–my version is called The Princess Who Chased Sheep–but there’s also retellings of Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, Rapunzel, The Brave Little Tailor, and more!

15 fairy tale classics reborn. 15 endings you’ll have to read to believe!

What if Beauty was the beast? What if Little Red Riding Hood was a sacrifice? The stories of Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Sleeping Beauty have been told countless times over, but never quite like this…

There’s some really awesome authors taking part in this, so hopefully we’ll get to discover some new favorites!

To celebrate this anthology, all of us authors are holding a Facebook event next Friday, November 4! The event runs from 9 am to 7 pm Eastern. Each author is making an appearance at the event so you can ask questions or chit chat, and we’re giving away like…50+ free ebooks throughout the day. I’ll be on there from 9 am to 11 am with Cameron Jace, Aya Ling, and Melanie Cellier, so drop by for some fun times!

Thanks for reading, Champions, and have a lovely weekend!

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Cheers for Champions!

Good news all around! The Sleeping Beauty edits are going great! It never bodes well when the wizards (AKA my editors) suggest major revisions, and thus far it looks like it’s in pretty good shape. So it should be able to slide into its December release date with no problems!

I’m making some edits to Cinderella–there are no plot revisions, it’s all just stylistic stuff that you all hopefully won’t notice–but because of that I’ve temporarily blocked paperback sales. There are still some third parties selling copies, but ignore them! Cinderella paperback sales should be back up in January with the errors ironed out and a new cover to boot. Additionally, Red Rope of Fate and Swan Lake are at the formatters right now for paperback release. With a lot of luck, they’ll be available for purchase before Christmas time! Finally, I’ve gotten to work on some new short stories for the Snow Queen Anthology, which will be released this December as well. So yay for projects staying on time! (For once. Hah!)

Though I’m catching up on all this background work, I wanted to take a post to celebrate some awesome Champions. First up, we have a piece of Beauty and the Beast fanart!

Elle and Severin of B&B: Drawn by Melissa Kaye

This has been posted in the gallery for a bit, but I still wanted to give a public shout out to Melissa Kaye for her awesome artwork! Elle and Severin are very special to me because their book launched my career (Never mind that they were the most difficult couple for me to match-make. GAH!) so it was really fun to receive this. (I think the lighting effect and the background are especially drool-worthy. Wowza!) Thanks again, Melissa, for making it!

Also, back in September I got some really sweet and touching letters from Champions who were mailing in to receive a Snow Queen postcard! So a big thank you to Carly H., Audrey, Cami P, Kenley C., and Maegan S! Britta (my intern) handed over your letters right after I was coming out of a rough work week, and your letters were the pick-me-up I badly needed! Thank you so much for your encouragement and your kind words, it was really special to read your thoughts.

Which also reminds me, Sydney J.–Britta tried to mail off your postcard, but the post office said the address wasn’t deliverable. If you want to shoot me an email so we can figure out what address to send it to, that would be great!

That’s everything for today! Thanks for reading, Champions. I hope you have a lovely weekend!

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Welcome New Champions!

It seems like Beauty and the Beast snagged a bunch of new readers, so I wanted to take a post here to welcome everyone!

I’m K. M. Shea, though I go by Kitty, and you have stumbled into my online community comprised of the Champions and me. The first question I’m sure you now have is who are the Champions? That would be you. No, seriously. If you’re here, and you’ve read my books, you are a Champion. A champion is, according to dictionary.com, a person who fights for or defends any person or cause. Hello champion, I am your person.

If you haven’t guessed by the pet name, my readers/Champions are important to me, so I’ve tried to build a community for us. (We’re all in this together, after all, searching the world for good books to read!) As part of that there is an Extras page filled with tons of extra goodies from books I’ve written, a Fanart gallery filled with the beautiful artwork of some very talented Champions, a page for anyone interested in writing, a monthly newsletter, Goodreads lists we populate together (Sweet Romance and Clean Kindle Unlimited Reads) and more.

Besides my Champions, my team also plays a big role in my life as an author. I have two Editors (#1–the Comma Queen and #2 the Stylistic Ninja) and a cover-artist, Myrrhlynn. (She pronounces it like ‘Merlin’) This trio really help me produce the best possible books, and they’re so fun to work with because we all share similar reading tastes. (Sometimes I worry we’re too much alike because we all tend to adore the same characters…)

If you want to know a bit more triva about me, C. M. Williams from Ember Reviews had me on her blog for a really fun author interview. For the Champions who have been around the block with me, I really suggest you check her website out–she’s got some awesome recommendations I was drooling over when I popped in to steal the link!

That’s all for today. Have a lovely week, Champions, and thank you for reading!

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WE HAVE MOVED!

Greetings, Champions.

WE HAVE MOVED! www.kmshea.com has moved hosting and has a new layout. As of October 2016, this old version of Kmshea.com is no longer active. Please click the link to visit our new home!

Welcome to the New Website!

Welcome to our new home, Champions! I’m still “moving in” so to speak, so some things are a bit rough, but for the most part everything is up and running. To celebrate the move, Beauty and the Beast will be available for free 10/6–10/10! If you already have a copy spread the word to anyone you think would enjoy it!

Okay, the new site has a lot of fun goodies, so let’s dive right in! First up, the world of Timeless Fairy Tales has a map! Daniel of Daniel’s Maps took my scrawls and my awful, blobby writing-reference map and created this beauty:

The map is meant to be a reference, not a spot-on geographical chart–which means everything isn’t done to scale. (Math frightens me, and I didn’t want to try to fathom how many miles/kilometers each country was.) Still, I’m hopeful it will help everyone better picture how the various countries are positioned and how it affects them. You can find the map at its new home in the Timeless Fairy Tales tab under the books section, along with the Timeless Fairy Tales timeline.

The long awaited fanart gallery is up! Now that I have the ability to group pictures and link to artists, it will be much easier to display and post fan art. I’ve wanted this feature for a loooong time, so I’m thrilled I finally have something concrete to show for it!

There’s also a new tab For Writers. The big thing in this new section is that it has a PDF handout that lists a ton of helpful resources. I know there are a lot of budding authors out there, and there aren’t enough hours in the day to chat with everyone interested in writing, but I still want to be an encouragement-hence the resource list! I have personally used/read/watched/listened to all of the resources on the list, and they’re the best that I know of, so if you’re interested in writing give ’em a look! The handout also contains info that I get asked pretty frequently (in example: how did you find your editors?) and I intend to update it whenever I stumble upon a new resource or commonly asked question.

The page for bloggers isn’t up quite yet, but I waded through all my King Arthurs posts and linked up any book-specific posts to the right book page. (I did that with my fairy tales from the start, but even though I write themed King Arthurs blog posts I never got around to doing the same for them…until now anyway!)

This new website has so many new features and tools, I can hardly wait to put it through its paces! I’m still a little leery, though, because I don’t know for sure that everything is working. In particular, if a few of you who are subscribed to the blog would give a shout in the comment section that you received notification of this I would really appreciate it. (All subscriptions were imported over here, but I want to make certain it’s working.)

And that seems like plenty for today! Thanks for reading, Champions. I hope you have a pleasant weekend!

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Happy Panda is back!

EDIT: New website is launching THIS AFTERNOON! (9/30) It will take me a few days to get everything reorganized, things will be wonky this weekend.

The time has come for the return of happy panda!

For those of you who have joined up with our stellar community in the last year, I occasionally will use panda pictures to communicate my mental level of function. (I mostly use it when I am sick and words are difficult for me to use due to my mushy brain.) Today, however, is such a joyous occasion, I had to use a happy panda picture! “What is so wonderful about today?” you might ask.

First up: Not only is Sleeping Beauty written, I’ve already completed the dreaded first round of editing! I’m hoping to do a lightning round this afternoon, and then tomorrow it gets sent off to Editor #2! As I mentioned previously it is much more lighthearted than Swan Lake or the Snow Queen books, and it’s actually fairly long. Right now it’s clocking in at about 75,000 words. (For reference, Sacrifice, the longest fairy tale book I’ve written thus far, is 78,000 words.)

Next: The Dirty Shepherdess is almost finished! I’m supposed to be working on it right now, but I’m right at the place where the two characters confess their love. This never fails to make me turn beet red and feel like a peeping tom, so I’m avoiding it at the moment.

Finally: I’ve seen the new website, and it is amazing! If all goes well we’ll be moving in sometime next week, so things will look really different! (And by different, I mean 1,000 times better.)

I suspect next week I’ll be busy with website work (There’s a few new pages going up and some new things you guys haven’t seen yet that I need to prep) but then I’ll be diving into the world of Britt and her boys. My plan is to do an editing sweep of the previous books (there’s a few typos that need fixing) to give me a chance to get my King Arthurs groove on, and then I will begin Endings!

That is it for today. Thanks for reading, Champions! Have a lovely weekend!

Stories update!

Greetings, Champions, I hope you’ve had a lovely weekend!

Although I’ve been forced to take a few half-days for some unexpected things, I’ve still managed to be very productive, so Sleeping Beauty is over three-fourths finished! I should be able to wrap it up this week. Editor #1 took a peek at it last week–I wanted to see what she thought of the romantic plot because it needed a few tweaks–and Myrrhlynn (my cover artist) started reading it Friday night. Editor #1 likes the hero of the story, and Myrrhlynn really loved the heroine, so hopefully that bodes well for its reception.

Back to work!

Greetings, Champions! I have returned from my travels and adventures in Switzerland!

As I am adventurous but not particularly daring, I went with the tour group Alpine Wild for my trip. Gotta say, the food over there is amazing! Alpine Wild has a Tolkien tour I badly wanted to take, but they don’t offer it ever year, and this happened to be one of their off years, I am sorry to say. Even so, since the tour guides knew I was a rabid Tolkien/literature fan, they pointed out some landmarks that Tolkien saw when he toured Switzerland as a young lad!

True story: This photo isn’t photoshopped!

 

The countryside was gorgeous, and it was wonderful to be able to unplug for a while, but I am thrilled to be back, and I’ve already jumped into writing!

Next thing of interest, I was on another podcast! I was the guest for Simon Whistler’s Rocking Self Publishing podcast 161st episode. He is a fabulous host and interviewer, and I had a lot of fun talking to him–which is an accomplishment because usually I am nervous and sick to my stomach during things like interviews. We really dig into the details of writing “retellings,” so if you’re interested, here’s the link to the episode!

Things will be a bit in upheaval this month due to all the projects I’m balancing–the new website is coming along wonderfully, I just approved the header image last week and it is BEAUTIFUL!!–but especially because I’m back to writing with a vengeance. At this time, my book release schedule should be…

Late November: *Releasing a short story in an anthology with a bunch of other authors, more on this in future posts *Endings, the final King Arthurs book.

Mid December: *Sleeping Beauty, book 8 of the Timeless Fairy Tales *Snow Queen short story anthology, which will contain all the short stories on the website, and some new content

Endings may get pushed back to a December release depending how the editing goes for all the books. Poor Editor #1 is going to get slammed, and I haven’t even told her about the short story for the anthology yet. Ahahahah…I should probably go grovel to her.

That’s all for today, Champions. Have a great week!