K.M. Shea's Blog, page 73

Beauty and the Beast: the original

Being that today marks the launch party for  Beauty and the Beast, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to discuss the ways I based it on the original fairytale. The story of Beauty and the Beast was written in 1740 by a woman named Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve.  However, the version we know best is the abridged version of the story, which Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont wrote in 1756. I pulled inspiration from both versions of the story.

In a nutshell, in Beaumont’s version of the story Belle–the daughter of a bankrupt merchant–lives in the beast’s castle as collateral damage after her  father picks one of the beast’s prize roses. While staying in the castle Belle is spoiled rotten. Beast gives her the best foods, jewels, an extensive wardrobe, and every thing her heart desires. Each night he asks her to marry him and she says no because “she only sees him as a friend.” (HAH.) After living like this for several months Belle gets homesick and–with the beast’s blessing–returns home, promising she’ll be back within a week. The beast sends a magic mirror with her so she can see what’s happening back at the castle. Belle’s sisters (she has two) grow jealous of Belle’s lavish lifestyle when she comes home and tells all that has happened to her, and they convince her to stay for an extra day. When Belle returns to the castle and finds the beast dying of a broken heart. (Apparently he loved her so much he would die if she spent more than a week away from him.) Belle cries and tells the beast she loves him, and he is turned into a handsome prince. He explains that he had to live as a beast until a maiden fell in love with him because he was cursed by a fairy when he refused to let her seek shelter in his castle during a storm.

Villeneuve’s story is basically that, only Villeneuve dove more into the beast’s past as well as Belle’s. In her version you find out that the beast was not cursed because he was a brat, but instead a wicked witch cast the enchantment on him and Belle is actually the daughter of a king and a good fairy. (She was given to the merchant to take in as his adopted child when her mother died and the king remarried a wicked step mother who wanted to kill Belle.) Villeneuve additionally had a much larger cast of characters that Beaumont culled to make the story shorter, and she wrote about the beast’s royal family.

I wanted to take my version of the story back to the originals rather than base it off the more modern adaptions, so I took elements from both of the stories. My take on Beauty and the Beast has the magic mirror and the beast’s obsession with roses. I also made my story of a similar timeline (months rather than weeks) although Elle’s arrival and broken leg are my own invention. As in the original, Elle is one of three daughters, her father is a bankrupt merchant, and she is given a gorgeous wardrobe and exotic/delicious food. I gave homage to both Villeneuve and Beaumont by having a wicked witch curse Severin (the beast) to live and act like a beast. I slightly twisted Beaumont’s version so that it was a beautiful enchantress who saved Severin by restoring his mind to him, however, she was unable to change his appearance and as a result placed a spell on him so he could return to his real body if a maiden fell in love with him. Like Villeneuve’s story, Elle is not what she appears to be (although it has nothing to do with her parentage so NO she is not a half fairy.) and I included more information on Severin’s family.

Additionally, as both of these ladies are French I tried to give my story a French feel to it. Most of the names are French, and the clothing and fashions presented in the book are all from approximately 1650-1750 France, ditto with the foods.

Of course this is my version of beauty and the beast, so my story includes fighting, pending wars, espionage, strong minded characters, humor, and a lot more danger than anything presented in the original stories. I hope you get a chance to read it, and that you enjoy it. Happy reading, Champions, and I will see you on Monday!

I have some big news to share! First of all I did some te...

I have some big news to share! First of all I did some techno mumbo-jumbo, so you can get to this blog super quickly if you type in http://www.kmshea.com. Huzzah for domain mapping!

Secondly I just finished uploading Beauty and the Beast. Amazon has to OK it and publish it, so it probably won’t be available until midnight-ish tonight. I have to confess, I was starting to grow worried about getting it up in time so for now it has a really, really bad placeholder image as the cover. When Myrrhlynn (my cover artist) sees it she is either going to laugh herself silly, or tell me in a flat voice that I lack taste. As soon as the professional cover is ready I will replace it ASAP.

As a reminder, I will be offering B&B for free on Friday and Saturday, and I’ll be offering a free extra B&B short story to anyone who reviews B&B. For details see the top post!

That’s all I have for this short but sweet update. I wish you all a happy Wednesday, and I will see you on Friday.

No Plot? No Problem

Before I start today’s post I want to announce that I hope to upload Beauty and the Beast to Amazon tonight or tomorrow. Due to Amazon’s publishing system even if it is available tomorrow I might not be able to get the book lined up for a free promo day. Because of that I’m pushing back B&B‘s freebie days by one day. You can plan for it to be available for free on Friday–December 13–and Saturday–December 14.

Ok, on to the fun stuff! I know I just recently did a writing tips entry, but this weekend I checked out a marvelous book from the library and once B&B is launched I will be filling this blog with B&B news. Plus I’m dying to talk about it and if I tried to bring this kind of thing up among my social circle most people would eye me oddly.

The book is called No Plot No Problem, and I cannot recommend it highly enough for new writers. The book is written by the creator of NaNoWriMo–or National Novel Writing Month–and the book focuses on the purpose of NaNoWriMo–writing a novel (50,000 words) in a month. What makes this book so valuable is that single idea.

The author is very upfront in saying that you probably aren’t going to produce the next great American novel by writing a book in one month, but the experience is priceless. I don’t mean to sound discouraging, but the first novel you write is like a set of training wheels. It’s what you learn on, it’s not an example of your finest work. I wrote at least four full length, finished books before I produced anything of worth. I went back and rewrote the punctuation off my earlier stories so they are great products now, but I would rather take a vow to be a hermit than to let you, Champions, read the first drafts of Princess Ahira or Life Reader.

So if you know your first novel is going to be less than stellar, why not write it fast and get it over with? Instead of starting with that Epic Fantasy you’ve been dreaming about for the past five years, write a shorter book that will teach you through experience about the craft of writing. Your dream book will benefit greatly and your rewrites won’t be as painful.

That is not to say your first novel is going to be trash. Lots of people who participate in NaNoWriMo take time to clean up their novels and make them into great books, but no one can deny that your first draft of your first book is basically an experiment. Even if you know that it is still a lot of fun, and I promise you’ll feel accomplished when you finish it.

No Plot No Problem also gives you the tools to figure out how to squeeze writing time into your life, and it talks about the importance of deadlines. In a nutshell, most people don’t write a novel even if they want to because they never give themselves a sense of urgency/looming deadlines. Having a goal will help you make yourself write. I use this method myself. My goal isn’t necessarily to write a novel in a month, but I do try to come up with a word goal for every month. (For instance I’ll say my goal is to write 30,000 or 40,000 words. All of my King Arthur and Her Knights books are typically written in 30ish days.)

No Plot No Problem also has a lot of great advice from people who have participated in NaNoWritMo. They talk about the midway slump, how to keep slogging through, keeping yourself encouraged, and more.

The biggest ideas I want to endorse with this book are 1) write with a deadline and 2) write that  first novel FAST and don’t be ashamed about it. Given that NaNoWritMo is a fairly big phenomena I’m pretty confident you’ll be able to find a copy of this book in your local library system. Find it, read it, embrace it! Believe me, as a writer I want you to succeed. Most people want to write a book, but very few people ever do. No Plot No Problem is a great tool to help you get over that first hurdle, separating you from the want-tos.

Thanks for reading, Champions!

Cross your Fingers

With a little bit of ingenious maneuvering, Beauty and the Beast will be available for purchase late next week. I just got the manuscript back last night and I need to edit it once more, but after that the manuscript is ready for publishing. There is a slight hang up in the art department, though, as Myrrhlynn and I had plans to take a photograph for this cover and the weather just isn’t cooperating. According to the forecast I should be able to get the desired shot Sunday evening or Monday morning. Time will tell if this happens, though.

I would like to get B&B up by Wednesday (December 11) because typically I try to have my free days fall on Thursdays and Fridays. I think it’s a reasonable goal, and at worst it will be delayed a day or two. If there are changes to the release date/freebie days, fear not! I assure you that I will trumpet B&B‘s free days on this blog because I appreciate your loyalty in reading it.

And on that note, I shall make my departure. Thank you for reading, Champions, and I will see you all on Monday.

Character Motivation

Greetings Champions. It’s been a while since I’ve had a writing tip entry, so today I want to talk about character motivation.

Whether you fly by the seat of your pants and just write or you tediously plot out your stories, one thing that you absolutely must decide on beforehand is character motivation. Your heroes must have motivation as a group and individually, and your villains must have a motive for doing what they do.

If we want to look at it from the villain’s viewpoint, Sauron from Lord of the Rings is an obvious example. His motivation? He wants to take over Middle Earth. He’s very upfront and predictable in his desire, but that doesn’t make him any less dangerous. An example of a less blunt villain would be Miss Bingley from Pride and Prejudice. Her motivation is that she wants to marry Mr. Darcey. This desire sets her up as Elizabeth’s enemy, and it eventually affects her friendship with Elizabeth’s sister, Jane, when she concludes that having anything to do with Elizabeth’s family is dangerous.

So Sauron, the dude with the spiky helmet? Yeah, this is him before he went through his gothic phase. He was actually named Mairon and was a good guy until–you guessed it–he was otherwise motivated. The image is NOT mine.

Heroes are much the same. Robin Hood steals from the rich and gives to the poor because he wants to provide for those in need. Pirates look for treasure because they are driven to find gold.

Motivated characters drive a plot forward. It’s what pushes them to reach, run, or pursue. This is true in any kind of genre. In horror books the characters are fighting for life, in romance they’re fighting for love. Typically the fate of the world is at risk in fantasy books, and the desire to stop a killer is what pushes the detective to solve a murder mystery. Unmotivated characters make for really boring books. When you craft your plot make sure your characters are motivated to see the story through. Give them personal reasons to, and raise the stakes.

You also must be sure to include personal motivations. In Princess Ahira Azmaveth creates Kohath because he is driven by his curiosity. He wasn’t romantically interested in Ahira at first, but his personal motivation came back and bit him on the rump to make that happen. The plot for Red Rope of Fate revolves around court intrigue, kidnapping, and blackmail. But the romance of Red Rope of Fate starts with Tari’s motivation to befriend Arion because she feels obliged to. Individual motivation will explain why the character does what he/she does.

A character can and should have more than one motivation. Sometimes the character’s motivations aren’t even discussed in the book, but you can see the way they affect the character. (Tari’s career as an Evening Star is a perfect example. I don’t come out and say “EVENING STARS PROTECT HUMANS” until 3/4 through the book, but you can see that mindset in Tari from the first page.) Sometimes books are even better if you don’t tell the readers what the character’s motivation is, but you still MUST give them a defined motivation because it will help you set a pattern for the character to react off.

That’s all for today, Champions. I will see you this Friday!

B&B is off!

It’s official, outside editors took their first look at Beauty and the Beast today. Huzzah!! Taking a peek at the way it’s going down, I’m hoping Beauty and the Beast will be available for purchase Wednesday, December 18. I will be offering it for free on December 19 and December 20 if that ends up being the actual release date, but I’m not making it official so don’t mark it on your calenders just yet.

I don’t really have anything to talk about. The weekend after holidays usually feel like I had the flu for three days straight and I can barely function when it’s done. Since I can’t think of anything pithy to say Some-e-card is going to pinch hit for me.

So true. Dealing with an evil step mom might be worth it if I got house-cleaning wildlife out of the deal.

Thanks for reading, Champions. I’ll see you on Wednesday!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving, Champions!

Beauty and the Beast has passed the first round of editing! It is getting sent out to my editing friends this weekend, hopefully I will be able to keep ahead of schedule.

Now then. I am one of those people that LIVES for Christmas, and I see the day after Thanksgiving as the official opening day for the Christmas season. Because of that I’m busting out a topic I’ve wanted to cover before this but restrained myself: book ornaments!

A simple yet delightful design.

The first ornament (see above image) is available on , but I think anyone would be able to make it based off the image. Just cut up book pages, roll them in tubes, and stuff a glass ball ornament. I also saw several variations of this style featuring cut/rolled sheet music and comic books.  Sometimes instead of rolling the pages into tubes they were cut out into snow flake shapes, or they were cut in long horizontal strips and pressed to the sides of the ornament, or curled so they look more like pieces of ribbon. I trolled Pintrest to find this design, so if you’re really interested in making this just search for “Book Ornament” and you’ll have your pick of the litter.

Not certain I would choose those particular books for my Christmas tree, but it’s a fantastic idea!

Next up we revisit my obsession for small books. Author made these little ornaments herself! (Click on the link for her tutorial.) I am loving this ornament–I MUST make one for A Christmas Carol! (What’s more appropriate for an ornament than a Christmas book?) In fair warning, I think the hardest part about this craft is getting a printer good enough to print out the images of the book. Those images are pretty small so a simplistic cover would be better than a detailed cover.

I think my favorite is the bird, but all these elegant designs would suit any reader.

And finally, we have the origami-inspired ornaments. The four pictured here were made by Rachael at . (See the link to visit her blog.) She doesn’t have a tutorial for the ornaments in the actual post, but she talks about how she made them in the comments section.

That’s all for today, Champions. I will update you on Monday with Beauty and the Beast’s progress. Until then, have a lovely weekend!

The Editing Frenzy

I have begun the Editing Frenzy for Beauty and the Beast. It’s not so bad since I had to go back and make adjustments when I was about halfway through writing the story, but I would dearly like to get this first edit read-through finished before Thanksgiving. After Thanksgiving I’m sending B&B off to be edited by two lovely friends of mine. I will then do a final read through, so I am hopeful that B&B will be available sometime in mid December.

I plan to hold my usual specials for B&B which means 1. I will offer it for free for a few days–don’t worry I will announce it well before the date so you all can snag it. 2. I’ll be offering an extra chapter to those who review B&B and email me to show they did. I’ll have more details for both specials when I select an actual release date.

While B&B is getting shopped out, I will begin working on Embittered, the next King Arthur and Her Knights book. I have no idea how long it will take me to write Embittered, but at the latest you can expect it to be released in February.

It’s another short update today, but tomorrow I will have time to actually present a decent/not-self-centered post. Plus I want someone to gloat with me that Embittered is my next project. Celebration!

Thanks for reading, Champions, and I shall see you tomorrow.

 

All Done

I am proud of myself, for once I have a very good reason for missing my Monday update and nearly missing Wednesday’s as well. Ready for it? Ok, here it comes!

I FINISHED WRITING BEAUTY AND THE BEAST!!! It needs to be edited a few times, and I have a few scenes to rework, but over all I’m very pleased with the results. Right now it’s sitting at about 60,000 words–but it will probably shrink as I hack and slash at my descriptions OR it will grow because I need to add a few additional touches.

Either way, it is done! I’m going to celebrate by going to bed. Good night, Champions. That’s for hanging in there with me!

Hunger Games Theme Park

Several reputable news sources have published articles saying that Lionsgate is considering the possibility of building a Hunger Games theme park. I’m not surprised they’re considering such a thing, Hunger Games (the movie) made over $690 million. However, I reaaallllyyyy hope they don’t go forward with it.

It’s not because I don’t think books can make awesome theme parks. I cannot recommend the Harry Potter world in Universal Studios enough. They nailed everything from the sets (Honeyduke’s was incredible!) to the food (I AM going back for more butterbeer!) to the rides themselves. I love the Harry Potter part of the park.

But I don’t think Hunger Games is the right book to make a theme park out of. In fact, if they do move ahead with their plans it makes me think that Lionsgate MISSED the whole point of the series. For starters Hunger Games is much more sobering than Harry Potter. It’s a fantastic series  because its complexities and the way it studies social and economic discrepancies. Harry Potter is Good vs Evil. Hunger Games (the first book) is pretty much a gladiator game.  The theme park would HAVE to acknowledge the killing or it’s going to be nothing like the books. And if they acknowledge the deaths it’s going to be in a way that trivializes them unless they make the park a blood bath.

Let’s ignore the actual story and think about what Lionsgate would bring to life. The cornerstone Universal Studios used for the Harry Potter park was Butterbeer. Lionsgate would probably select the lamb stew Katniss loved.  It would be the natural selection. But remember, Katniss ate the lamb stew while she was shocked and amazed at the quantity of food and everyone from the capital was puking so they could eat more.  WHY would we want to trivialize that and make it into  theme park cuisine?

Hopefully Lionsgate will not go forward with these plans. In the meantime, I aim to sit in a corner and cry because no  one is planning to make a Star Wars theme park–or better yet–a Lord of the Rings theme park. Thanks for reading, Champions, I will see you next Monday.