K.M. Shea's Blog, page 63

The Little Selkie

I didn’t expect Amazon to finish it so soon, but they cranked it out! Champions, please allow me to introduce to you, The Little Selkie. (Several hours early, might I add.)

As you can tell by the top post, I am running the usual Read & Review special–you can read all about it in the for-mentioned top post–but it isn’t starting until Friday, 4/24. If you want to submit your review before then go ahead, however, I won’t be able to get you the extra chapter until then.

I hope you enjoy the newest Timeless Fairy Tale, Champions! It’s been a long time coming, but I’m thrilled with the edits. I hope you are too! Enjoy!

Cover Reveal & Release Date

Big news! The wait for The Little Selkie is almost over! The edits are completed, the only thing that’s left to play with is the formatting. I’m planning to release it this Thursday–that’s April 23. Woohooo! The wait has been long, but I’m thrilled with all the changes, and I’m hoping you all will enjoy it, too. Anyway, here’s the cover!

Wow, where to start? Myrrhlynn, as usual, did another fantastic job that beautifully highlights the story and its protagonist–Dylan. It’s important to note that the black shape is a sea lion, not a seal. Selkies traditionally transform from seals to human, you see, but Dylan is a little different. Because that difference is featured prominently in the book, Myrhlynn went the extra mile and made a sea lion image instead of a seal. Also, I have to give her props for the bright, happy cover. It is a perfect match for Dylan’s personality, and the picture (the craggy rocks on the beach) is a spot-on representation of Ringsted landscape. And–as I’m sure you have come to expect–I am absolutely enthralled with the fonts she used! I think fonts are the frosting on the cake, and Myrrhlynn always chooses the best!

Are you excited, Champions? I can’t wait to see what you think of Dylan and her friends, and it’s less than a week away. Woohoo!

National Library Week

Tomorrow marks the beginning of National Library week! In celebration Enthroned will be FREE from Sunday–April 12–to Tuesday–April 14!

What is national library week? It’s a week set aside by the American Library Association that marks a celebration of libraries. It was first sponsored in 1958, and National Bookmobile Day, Support Teen Literature Day, and National Library Workers Day all occur during it. Most–if not all–local libraries will have special programs,  contests, and prizes this week–so be sure to swing by your local library and see what they’re up to!

National Library Week is kind of a big deal for me because I worked in a library as a page in college, and then as a circulation clerk for roughly three years before I became an author. While I worked as a librarian I may or may  not have acted like Ann “The Librarian” Withers…

 

April Fools!

I’ve got two reader questions to answer, but let’s start out with a freebie! Mark your calendars, on April 1, Life Reader will be free in honor of Asher and Aron–a pair of socially awkward practical pranksters! Pick up a copy to witness their fun!

And into the questions we go! Lauren asks How do your family and friends respond to you as a fairy tale romance writer? Do they take your work seriously?

To me being taken “Seriously” means that my family and friends don’t judge and/or lecture me about my career choice, and that they’re happy for me. So yes, my family takes my work very seriously! To begin with, my cover-artist, Myrhlynn, is my sister. She reads my work and has listened to me talk storylines and characters for hours, and she does a lot of marketing. My mother helps me proofread, and she is good at catching the times I accidentally let a character fall off. (You have her to thank for the scene in Farewell to the MBRC when Doggie attacks Krad.) My father and other sister are still quite proud of me, even if they don’t read my work. (My non-reader sister thinks it’s a stitch that I’m an author, and she goes around collecting names, amusing stories, and fun facts for me. 80% of the animals in my  books are based off her pets.)

I have a handful of close friends who are so supportive, and who have served as cheerleaders along my journey. Moreover, my extended family is also quite supportive and happy for me. Being supportive does not mean I don’t occasionally receive a good ribbing, but that’s half the fun of being an author!

I will say what has surprised me is the  people I meet and/or am introduced to, who ask me inexcusably rude questions about my financial status and stability. It seems that people who have a passing acquaintance with my family feel it is within their right to pass judgement on me and my career, and they have no qualms about inquiring how I pay for things.

I try not to let them bother me, though, because I’ve read about and met a few authors that have the reverse problem–their families are the judgmental ones and strangers are the ones who accept it.  I am so blessed that the people closest to me–the ones I spend the most time with  and love the most–are the ones who are happiest for me. A few sour grapes will not be allowed to steal my joy from me when I have such an amazing family and wonderful friends!

And now for an editing question! JB says: I’m one of those readers who spots typos in everything I read. I can’t help it; they just seem to jump right off the page at me. I’ve always wondered – do authors want to know when readers spot a typo or an error of some sort as they’re reading through their books? Or do they wish readers would turn a blind eye to any minor mistakes that managed to slip into the final version and just enjoy the story they’ve worked so hard to tell?

This is a tough topic to tackle for me, not because I’m particularly emotionally charged about people finding errors–goodness knows what horrors I’ve put you poor Champions through with this blog post alone–but because of the Amazon update/edition policy. I love Amazon. They have my loyalty and my thankfulness because without them I wouldn’t be able to do any of this. However…trying to get updated books to readers is a nightmare.

Here’s what happens. Reader $ finds an error and lets me know, I correct and upload a new version of the story. Reader % finds two errors and let’s me know. The thing is, Reader % bought her copy before Reader $, but she is rereading it, or perhaps she hasn’t had a chance to read it yet, so one of the two errors Reader % found has already been corrected and uploaded, she just doesn’t know it. And then Reader @ comes along, and she bought her copy after Reader $’s correction went live, but before Reader %’s correct error went live…. You see how things can get confusing? Just wait, it gets worse.

Nothing makes me into a sad/cranky panda like the Amazon update policy.

Amazon will only update a book (That means allow readers to update their copy OR force an update onto their Kindle) if a book shows “significant” change. I uploaded a new version of B&B in January, and it has about three new paragraphs of text in the ending scene, and about 50 punctuation corrections. I’ve gone back and forth with Amazon a couple of times, but they won’t update it. What is even more terrible is that as a reader you cannot delete your old copy off your kindle and account and repurchase the new edition. You’ll get the same book  you deleted off your kindle, even though you repurchased it. I have only once been able to successfully convince Amazon to update one of my books, and it took many errors. So what happens when I upload copies of my books–correcting only a few errors at a time? Even if I go through 30 editions and the last book is far more professional/edited than the first, it won’t show significant improvement over the previous edition, so Amazon won’t change it.

That being said, I have a few abandoned children–cough Robyn Hood cough–that could really use some attention, but my schedule won’t allow for it. I’m far more picky about tracking errors through Timeless Fairy Tales than I am through Princess Ahira or Red Rope of Fate. It’s unfortunate, but I have to play favorites.

I do know some authors get downright offended over readers sending in corrections–which is silly–and others just don’t have the time to track the errors through the editions and uploads. But here’s my take on it: I do like it if people let me know about terrible errors, (I say terrible because once or twice I’ve had people try and correct dialog that I purposely wrote errors into) but I recognize it’s better in the long run if I sit on all the errors and have an editor go over it another time or two before I update it again, in hopes that Amazon might be kind and let me send this update out to all readers who previously bought the book. My goal as a writer is to make my books as entertaining and enchanting as possible. If there was an error that really threw you off, that is not a good thing, and that’s my fault, not yours.

That’s all for today, Champions! Enjoy your free copy of Life Reader, and good luck avoiding the usual tricks on April 1!

22 Rules and Monthly Update

I have my final post for Rumpelstiltskin all set, but as it is a New Year I’m going to delay it a little bit and clue you in on the goals for the rest of my month.

I’ve done my first fly by of Embark. It needs a little more work–I see probably two draft revisions in its future. Myrrhlynn got a chance to read it, so she’s thinking about a cover. I’m hoping for a mid-January release, but it might be pushed back to the end of January if I can’t get all my ducks in a row.

When I’m not working on Embark, I’ll be pushing B&B through formatting for its paperback debut, and I have a hacked and slashed edit of Red Rope of Fate to go up when I finish switching a few details. Editor finally got a chance to correct it, and she had a few good points so I’m making some minor adjustments.

I’m working on getting a newsletter up and running. The newsletter will be a once month update that will make sure everyone is on the same page. It will have my scheduled freebies and releases for the month (yes, this means I’ll have to get over my release-date-commitment-phobia.) and it will include polls, contest information, and more. It will be like a one-stop-shop. I’m hoping my first newsletter will go out February 1st!

IMPORTANT: I have so far been using a (terribly unprofessional as my numbers guy would say) yahoo email. THIS MONTH I’m swapping to a new email: kmshea (at) kmshea.com. (For the record, I wanted to go with Philspizza (at) kmshea.com, but then numbers guy would heave a great big sigh, as if I was his red-headed step-child, so kmshea (at) kmshea.com it is.) I’ll be updating all my contact forms so they’ll automatically send to my new email, but if any of you have my email saved, please make the switch.

And finally, it’s been too long since I’ve shared some writing advice! Over my Christmas holiday, I stumbled on this fascinating article: 22 Rules of Storytelling. Emma Coats, a Pixar storyboard artist, posted 22 tweets that contain grains of wisdom she has learned while working at Pixar. I think all of her points are great, but there’s a few I want to touch on.

Pixar, a company that is highly talented at making you cry during kid movies.

#3: Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite: This is so true. Often times I’ll start the story with a specific theme in mind, but when I finish it a completely different moral shines through. Sometimes the theme you want to tell is not the theme your characters tell. If that’s the case I would say ditch the first theme and run with the second. That being said, you need to make sure your theme is consistent, and its present from the first chapter until the very last.

#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free: This is a very painful lesson, but its extremely important. The basic idea is that you need to cut back the unnecessary, boring information to make the story set a faster pace. Cutting characters hurts. Raven from Life Reader originally had a little brother in addition to her little sister. I decided to cut him because he was entirely unnecessary and did nothing to add to the plot. I thought it would take hours to pull him out of the story, until I realized he was in THREE SCENES TOTAL. Even though I was sad, it was one of my best writing decisions ever.

#9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up: Not only is this a fun exercise, but it works! If you try this out and you’re still having trouble, talk to your characters. If I’m in a scene and I can’t think of what to do, I’ll sit down and say “Okay, the scene ends like THIS” and then I will turn to my characters and ask “Why did it end that way?” It can be quite shocking, but so far my characters have always had something to say.

That’s all for today, Champions. I hope you had a happy new year, and welcome to 2015!

Christmas Gift

Ho-ho-ho, Merry Christmas, Champions!

First of all, remember your original Christmas gift: Today, December 31, and January 1, Enthroned will be available for free! But that’s old news! Today I’m delivering your second gift: The Unicorn Procession–PDF File. This is an original short story–which means it’s unrelated to any of my books. It is meant to be silly and entertaining. It clocks in at about four pages long and is vaguely fairy tale themed. I hope you enjoy it!

Next week we’ll host another Rumpel themed post, and after that it will be time to start gearing up for Embark‘s release. Speaking of which, my beta reader finished reading Embark on Christmas. She said she was excited to see that there were a few “turning points” between Britt and several other characters.

And with that terrible teaser, I’m going to make my exit. Farewell, Champions! I hope you had an enjoy Christmas–and to those who celebrate it, Happy Boxing Day!

Merry Christmas!

Ho-ho-ho, and Merry Early Christmas! I know I’m a little premature, but I’ve got some news/”gifts” I’m dying to share with you, Champions!

In the first bit of news, in January (probably late January) Beauty and the Beast will be available in paperback! The paperback copy will include the extra story that is available in the freebies section, will have a full-color cover, and will contain all the other fun things that come with physical books. I’m checking the manuscript errors before I hand it off to the designers, who will arrange so it looks beautiful in print format. Those who have original copies of the ebook, don’t worry. Editor has gone through and spiffed up the book so it looks much nicer. Once I finish the final checks, I will reload it on Amazon and hopefully manage to pester them into sending out a new, edited edition for your Kindles!

Now for the gift: King Arthurs fans–I have heard your pleas! Embark, book four of the King Arthurs and her Knights is FINISHED! Yes, you read that right, I’ve finished writing it! Between all the edits and Christmas celebrations, it probably won’t be available until mid or late January, but it is done and your time will soon arrive! Speaking of King Arthurs…

Enthroned will be available for FREE on these days: December 25, 26 & 31 and January 1. Spread the news and share the King Arthurs love please! (Or be a really smart gift giver and tell someone you’ve gotten them an ebook for Christmas. ;) They don’t need to know it was free, right?)

I also wanted to thank everyone for your fantastic support of Rumpelstiltskin! This week–in the wee hours of the morning right before I tucked into my computer to write part of Embark–I discovered that Rumpelstiltskin briefly hit bestseller status in the YA fantasy category of Fairy Tales & Folklore! This whole week Rumpelstiltskin has been duking it out with Reign–which thrills me as Chandra Hahn is a big-name Kindle author! Reign is mostly winning, but I am wowed, humbled, and greatly blessed by your support! Thank you, Champions!

Ta-da! Thank you, Champions!

So that’s all for today–although truthfully I think that’s plenty of great news! There’s still one more informational-Rumpelstiltskin blog coming, and I have a little Christmas gift to give you guys, so keep an eye out for updates, please. Thanks for reading, Champions!

Origins and Analyzing Rumpelstiltskin

When I first started researching Rumpelstiltskin, I was surprised to find that it is a tale with many different versions, and is known far across Europe. That might sound stupid of me, but of the three fairy tales I’ve adapted before Rumpel, Cinderella is the only story that can be found in most cultures. Beauty and the Beast is purely of French origins, and Wild Swans is mostly Germanic–although similar stories were told in different parts of Europe. Rumpelstiltskin follows Cinderella’s example and is known world-wide. In Scotland he was called Whuppity Stoorie; Ireland, Trit-a-Trot; Amsterdam, Ricdin-Ricdon; and Germany, Rumpelstilzskin.

The Grimm brothers are credited with the oldest version of Rumpelstiltskin as they collected it and recorded it in 1812 in Children’s and Household Tales. However, that’s the oldest version of the traditional Rumpelstiltskin tale–which is where we can trace the roots of the modern tellings. There actually are older versions. Francois Rabelais published a book titled Gargantua, Geshichtkitterung in approximately 1580. It contains a story called Rumpele stilt oder der Poppart. I have no idea what that means, but you can see bits of Rumpelstiltskin’s name, so clearly the tale was in circulation long before the Grimm brothers arrived.

Additionally, there is a very similar fairy tale called The Three Spinners, in which three fairy-like women save the miller’s daughter. Instead of asking for her firstborn the final night of spinning, the women ask that the girl invite them to her wedding as her relatives. The girl (who is obviously much smarter than the heroine of Rumpelstiltskin) complies, and the three women show up to the ceremony with hideous deformities. They explain to the king that their deformities are a result of spinning too much. Horrified, the King forbids his new wife from spinning anymore. I really love this version of the story as the women lay the smackdown on the greedy King.

Next, analyzing Rumpelstiltskin! Most scholars focus on the idea that there are multiple villains in the story (the miller, the King, and Rumpelstiltskin) and they philosophize about Rumpelstiltskin’s motivation. Raven’s Shire has a beautiful blog post where she goes over the various motivations that could have driven Rumpelstiltskin, but to summarize her discussion, she states that Rumpelstiltskin was probably internally divided over the situation given that he gives the queen three days to come up with his name, and that he even makes the offer in the first place instead of stealing the child as 99% of fairies would have. Raven guesses that Rumpelstiltskin wanted to raise the child because he knew the child would be important or great–much the way fairies raised Lancelot and Merlin.

On the left are flax stalks, center are flax fibers, and right is the resulting thread after it has been spun many times.

While Rumpelstiltskin’s motivation interest me, I used my book to essentially shout what I believe Rumpelstiltskin’s true intent was (love) so instead I’m going to discuss the spinning process. As you know spinning straw into gold is an impossible task. However, it was ultra-impossible, because straw cannot be spun into anything. In August I visited the Landis Vally Village & Farm Museum in Lancaster, PA. (It’s a lovely place, I suggest you visit it if you are ever in the area.) One of their buildings housed sewing, quilting, and embroidery crafts, in which they included a lovely display about the process of preparing and spinning flax fibers into a rough thread. It was there that I first learned that cotton, flax, and wool could be spun into thread, but straw cannot because it lacks the long fibers necessary to form the thread.

This is a spinning wheel from the Landis Valley Museum. The white stuff on the distaff are the flax fibers–what a straw stalk lacks.

So not only was King Crazy demanding some sort of magical transformation from the Miller’s daughter in expecting her to change fibers into a precious metal, but he was also asking for something that isn’t possible from a material goods point of view. He was asking the miller’s daughter to create something out of nothing. The fact that imp-man could make something out of nothing is remarkable, and it is also why I suspect the price was hiked up so high on the last night. It drove home the point that there is a steep price for shortcuts. As much as this idea interested me, I was sadly unable to link it up in my telling because I wanted to focus on Stil’s character. However, I do think this is an example of a story that has been misinterpreted in modern society because we lack what was common knowledge back then.

What do you think, Champions? Am I reading too deeply, or was it important that the specific demand was for straw as opposed to flax or wool to be turned into gold? Let me know below, and as usual, thank you for reading!

Rumpelstiltskin: The original Fairy Tale

Since I started writing Timeless Fairy Tales, I have longed for the day that I get to attack Rumpelstiltskin, because the original fairy tale is cray-cray and I have always wanted to smack the heroine.

The story goes like this. An idiotic miller tells his King (no clues how the two came to be chatting, we’re just told the miller does this) that his daughter has the ability to spin straw into gold. What. First of all, what could possibly inspire a person to tell such an obvious falsehood, and secondly, WHY would he tell the King this, because the King is obviously NUTS. King Crazy summons the poor girl, shuts her up in a room filled with straw, and tells her to spin it all into gold in one night, or he’ll have her killed the following morning. Stable this King is not.

Now either the miller’s daughter is smart and refrains from telling King Crazy that her father was lying because she knows it’s going to get her killed, or she has the same intelligence level as her father and went along with it because…I don’t know. So the girl sits in the room and cries. It is then that an imp-like creature–or a little man depending on the version–mysteriously enters this locked and guarded room, and offers to spin all the straw into gold in exchange for the girl’s necklace. She agrees, and the little guy does manual labor for her all night. In the morning the King sees the straw-turned-to-gold, and tells the girl she better do it again, sticking her in an even bigger room of straw, or he will kill her.

Again the little dude shows up when the miller’s daughter starts crying. This time he offers to spin all the straw into gold for her gold ring. (Where the miller’s daughter is getting all this bling is not explained.) Instead of asking how he got in and requesting that he would help her escape, the girl agrees, and the little dude saves her–without being thanked or named, might I add. Two things that I would think someone in the same position as the miller’s daughter would feel to be vitally important. But is King Crazy satisfied with two rooms full of gold? Nope. So he tosses her in a third room with the same threat, only this time he promises he’ll marry her if she does it again. (Because marrying the guy who commonly threatens to kill you would be such a treat.)

This time when the little imp-man shows up, the miller’s daughter has no more bling. So, naturally, the next thing the little man asks for is her firstborn daughter. Talk about a jump in price. Truthfully, I think this was his terrible attempt to hit on her. I mean come on, what VILLAIN would do manual labor for a chick for three nights? If he wanted a baby for some nefarious reason I’m sure he could have plucked one off the streets. But no, instead he chooses to trade enough gold to outfit a kingdom to get a chance at swiping the firstborn child of the miller’s daughter.

The miller’s daughter is too oblivious to notice she is being courted, or she has the same parenting instincts as her father, and agrees to the trade. The straw is spun into gold, and the next day King Crazy is satisfied with all the gold and marries the miller’s daughter. (Oddly she doesn’t fight him or run away.)

For an unexplained reason, King Crazy finally ceases with the death threats. Time passes, and the miller’s daughter–who is now the queen–gives birth. The little-imp-man shows up, asking for the queen to hand the child over–probably intending to save the poor thing from its homicidal father and twit of a mother. The queen begs the little man to reconsider the bargain, offering up all the wealth she has, aka all-the-wealth-imp-man-spun-for-King-Crazy. Imp-man refuses, but he softens up and tells her that if she can guess his name within three days, she can keep the baby. Guess she should have made it a bigger priority to send him a thank you, huh?

Does anyone else think Rumpelstiltskin looks like one of Santa’s elves?

Apparently imp-man hangs around the palace (probably attempting to further hit on the queen) so he can tell the queen if she guesses incorrectly. The queen spends the first two days coming up with names, but sadly none of these names belong to imp-man. In the last few hours the queen wigs out because it appears that she’s going to lose her child. She sends out a messenger who stumbles upon imp-man, singing a song that his name is Rumpelstiltskin.

Let’s pause here for a moment. Imp-man was most assuredly at the palace, otherwise the queen wouldn’t know she was guessing incorrectly if he wasn’t there to tell her so. How did imp-man go from the palace, to being out in the wilds in the mountains, singing about his name? This is a guy who is sneaky enough to break into a locked, guarded room and spin straw into gold. Do you really think he couldn’t hide the truth of his name? I’m telling you, he’s totally sweet on the idiot of a queen.

Anyway, the messenger goes back and tells the queen what he heard. When imp-man/Rumpelstiltskin tells her the three days are up, the queen is feigns ignorance for a little while before declaring imp-man’s name to be Rumpelstiltskin.

At this point the versions differ on what happens. In the Grimm brother’s original 1812 story imp-man runs away and is never seen again. In a re-released version in 1857 he tears himself in half. In the oral version of the story that the Grimm brothers based their story off, imp-man flies way on a cooking ladle.

What I find most confusing about the story is this: the short little guy, who saves the miller’s daughter from her father’s stupidity, herself, the King’s threat is the villain. The King who threatened to kill the miller’s daughter? He’s the hero, I guess, because he gets the girl. Or we could say the miller’s daughter/the queen was the hero…but she lies to King Crazy, delegates her work to imp-man, and then essentially stiffs him. Some hero.

Don’t let my abundant sarcasm fool you, I am a big fan of the fairy tale! I also believe it has hidden depths to it that I hope to shed some light on in my next post. Until then, Champions!

Rumpelstiltskin’s Release

It is official, Rumpelstiltskin is released and available to purchase and read today! Everyone who pre-ordered their copy should have already received Rumpel on their Kindle early this morning.

As you might have guessed, Book it is back. Read and review Stiltskin, then send me an email with a copy of your review pasted in it and I will email you the extra story. For more details, see the top post! This extra story focuses on Stil’s life before he met Gemma, and gives you a glimpse of Angelique. It ended up being longer than I planned for–about 11 pages, which is why it’s more of a short story than an additional chapter for Pel–but I hope you all enjoy it!

Also, thank you to all the Champions who suggested shortened versions of Rumpelstiltskin for me to use! They’re all very good, so I’m going to give them a try in the next few posts and see which one jives best. (Although I have to admit, the idea of calling it Bob makes me chuckle.) Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoy Rumpelstiltskin!