Retellings that I Would Like To Write Someday.

Final day of the tour - how did it go by this quickly???? Anywho, I'm going to talk about the various fairy tale retellings that I have running around in my head but haven't written yet (at least not in their entirety). And I couldn't put a cap at seven, so you're getting thirteen, since some versions of Sleeping Beauty give her thirteen fairy godmothers.

1. All the Bookania.
Let's just get that one out of the way - my neverending series where I try to pack in all the fairy tales. I've made it through three books. Twenty bajillion left to go.

2. Red as Snow.
This is a retelling of Snow White that I've written about 3,500 words on, and I thiiiiink I'm about a third of the way through it. The book was inspired by the title, because my brain was tired and was messing with the fairy tale. It is, basically, a role reversal between SW and the stepmother. Snow is nearly ten years her stepmother's senior. But the "Prince," Snow's cousin, Charmel, is the true villain of the story. Yup, dreadfully twisted and I'm loving every moment of it.

3. Fair Rosamund.
This would be a historical fantasy. See, I was reading a book about Henry II, and it mentioned a mistress of his named Rosamund ... which happens to be a name belonging to Sleeping Beauty. So, yes, I made connections, and I now want to write a retelling. Someday. I'm not ready to write this story yet - that's how you guys ended up with Poison Kiss.

4. Snowella White
This is a blended retelling of Snow White and Cinderella, leaning closer to Snow White. I haven't quite worked out all of the logistics, but I'm substituting the seven dwarves for seven godmothers.

5. Untitled Rumpelstiltskin Sequel
This story actually dates back to Sew, It's a Quest's original conception, as it was going to be the second book in the "Beyond the Ever After" series that is now the Bookania Quests. Unfortunately, this story no longer fits into the Bookania framework that I have established. But it's well-plotted, about the child that Rumple lost, and is a bit of an allegory. So, fun.

6. Mermaid Footprints.
I have a .... page and a half of this book in my docs files. This is Mynna's story, and if any of you have read The Ankulen, you know that she's the youngest of seven mermaid sisters. As such, you probably already realize that it's a retelling of the Little Mermaid. Except that she leaves the water so she can save her people, not to be with a man, and she just happens to fall in love along the way.

7. The Dancing Princess
This is a retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses, where it's just one princess, not twelve of them. I haven't worked out all of the details, but she might be rescuing twelve princes. We'll see how it goes.

8. Cayra
This book is kiiiiiinda a sequel to the Little Mermaid. I can't say anything more about that, though.

9. Sing, Aling.
My sci-fi retelling of Peter Pan. Aling is the tinkerbell character, and she's half-fairy and half-elf, and not quite accepted by either society. And then a spaceship crashes on their planet. It's gonna be awesome, and I WILL write it for NaNo, one of these years. Probably next year. Worth of a King is on the agenda for this year.

10. Fairer than Beauty
A self-aware retelling of Beauty and the Beast where the girl assigned to the tale had been hoping for the obscure "Fairer than a Fairy" and then proceeds to try to completely derail the fairy tale in an attempt to get the story that she wanted.

11. Untitled Rapunzel Retelling
This is the idea I was messing with when I thought that the next Rooglewood contest would be Rapunzel. It's twist - instead of living in a tower, Rapunzel is trapped underground. No, I haven't worked out all of the details yet. Why are you asking?

12. Colinda and the Swan's Secret
Probably the loosest sense of a "retelling" on the list, Colinda was inspired by Swan Lake, so I'm going to count it.

13. To Perfect a Fairy Tale.
And, finally, I have the book where all of the fairy tales are messed up, and it's up to a young girl named Anthea to fix all of them. Fun stuff.

On The Blogs Today:
Morgan Elizabeth Huneke - Something About the SSS
Interviews:
Rachel Rossano's Words - Kendra
Dreams and Dragons - Rachel
Reviews:
Girls Living for God’s Glory - Twisted Dreams
Sutori no Hana - Twisted Dreams

Giveaway Time!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

There will also be a prize for the person who leaves the most comments across all of the blog posts for this tour - whoever leaves the most comments gets to read The Seven Drawers, the retelling of Snow White that I just finished for the Rooglewood contest, and Cindy Ellen, the sequel to Rosette Thornbriar. Both stories are finished, so you don't have to worry about cliff hangers. Get commenting.

And, as a reminder, any comments that you leave on my blog this month and next will count towards a drawing for a full set of my books, with the all-new covers.

Oh, and free books!
Sew, It's a Quest (Permafree): https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/731321
Woodcutter Quince (Free August 8-12): https://www.amazon.com/Woodcutter-Quince-Bookania-Short-Stories-ebook/dp/B00OYGVHP8/

Thank you to everyone who came by and took part in the blog tour - contest and giveaway winners will be announced Monday.

The Swan's Secret - Chapter 1

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Chapter 1

Crack in the Wall

It was after her. Colinda could feel It breathing down her neck. It wouldn’t be long, she knew with terrifying certainty, before It had her. But she wouldn’t give in. She couldn’t. She was the last hope. Yet, why she was, she couldn’t remember. Someone ran beside her, someone dear, yet who it was—was forgotten as well. This someone had less chance of escape than Colinda.

She willed herself to run faster, yet she knew it wasn’t enough. She would have to use her last resort. The one someone, she had forgotten this person too, had taught her and had told her to use only if there was no other escape possible. And there was no other escape now.

Her legs were giving out. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the other stumble. Now was the time. She stopped, muttered a few syllables, and then threw something off of her head. As the ground gave in under her feet, she knew they would both be safe from It, for a while at least.

Collie sat straight up in bed, sweat drenched, heart pounding. Would these dreams ever go away? This had been the worst one yet. She shuddered, trying to drive It’s maniacal laughter out of her head. It was in almost all of her dreams, and always something to be feared.

She glanced at the clock. 6:00. She might as well get up now, although no one else would be awake. No one, that is, except Dad, who was probably already at work. She sighed. Why did she have such a hard time thinking of them as her parents? Why, for her, did Mother and Father mean two people whose faces refused to materialize in her head?

She slipped out of bed, silently, so that she wouldn’t disturb Susan, who slept in the bed on the other side of the room. She eased out of the room, and tip-toed down the hall to the bathroom that she and Susan shared.

She flicked on the light, and, for a second, just stared at her reflection. She always stuck out like a sore thumb among the rest of the family. While they had olive complexions, her skin was the color of pale rose petals. While they had brown eyes, hers were the clearest blue. While they had dark brown or black hair, hers was a soft, golden blond. And sore was very much an accurate description, as a white scar on her left cheek reminded her. Even after a year, her scars still pained her, even though she had no idea where they came from.

She had no idea where she came from. She knew that Susan’s parents—her parents she reminded herself—had found her a year before, unconscious in their front yard. But how she got there, but why she had been unconscious, she had no idea.

Her scars had been open sores at the time, and, as she had been told, she had spent weeks in the hospital before she had woken up. Even then, she had been unable to sate their curiosities, for she could remember only that her name had been Collie. Funny thing was, she thought of herself as Colinda in her dreams. At the thought of her dreams she shuddered again.

Susan was a good sister. It was mostly because of her that her parents—their parents—had adopted Collie. Collie did love her new family, but had such a hard time thinking of it as her own. Who were her real family? Where were they? And how did Collie end up in the Liano’s front yard? Questions like these constantly plagued her, but there seemed to be no answers.

She pulled her nightdress over her head, and reached for the clothes she set out the night before. She pulled them on quickly, ran a brush through her hair, and then headed downstairs.

She had the run of the house right now, since she was the only one up. Mr. Liano—Dad—was already gone, as she had expected. She was usually up at this time, for those dreams plagued her. She had been having them as long as she could remember—which was only a year—and she hated them. Yet, somehow they seemed to hold some sort of key to what she had forgotten. She seriously doubted they were memories, for they were all far too fantastic. She did magic in many of them, like the one that morning, and in others, others did magic. They had to be only allegories, at most.

Perhaps something had been chasing her a one point. Perhaps someone dear to her had died, as she had seen in one dream. Perhaps—no, there was no way to explain the ones that showed people being turned into animals, they were just way to weird.

She tried to distract herself with a book. But that only led her to contemplation on the fact that, while she had no memories, or knowledge of science or history, when she had woken up, she was already an advanced reader, and her level in math had been quite high. She had a brain full of hard facts, with no memories to soften it. She threw the book down in frustration. Why couldn’t she concentrate this morning?

She wandered into the kitchen to fix herself some breakfast. Toast sounded good, so she popped two slices into the magical thing called the toaster. No, magic didn’t exist, she reminded herself; toasters were science, not magic.

Why did she do that? Why was she constantly thinking things of science as of magic?

Her whole life was a puzzle, and there seemed to be no solution. How had she gotten into the Liano’s front yard? Why had her dress, though very badly torn, as was her skin, been silk? Why had she spent four weeks in a coma that didn’t really affect her, other than a slight weakness? Somehow she knew the memory blank was due to something else. Why did she have that memory blank?

The toaster suddenly popped behind her, jolting her out of her dismal thoughts. She plopped the toast onto a plate, then scraped some butter onto them and squirted some lemon on top of that. She didn’t know why she liked sour stuff so much, but she personally found sweet stuff unbearable.

When she finished, she could still hear a scratching sound. At first she ignored it and took a big bite out of her toast, but as it grew louder, she had to investigate.

It was coming from the living room, so there she went. When she got there, her jaw fell to the floor in astonishment—and horror. A large crack had appeared on one wall, and was rapidly becoming larger. When it reached the ceiling and floor, the two sections of the wall began moving apart, revealing an enormous chamber that should have been impossible, as it was an outside wall.

Without thinking, she began walking towards it. Before she knew it, she was in it. Suddenly, the grating sound stopped. Then it started again. This time the walls were moving in the opposite direction. They were closing! She tried to run out, but it was closing much faster than it had opened, and her limbs seemed to be stuck in some sort of jelly.

Soon, she was trapped in total darkness.

Okay, she could admit it. Walking into a room like this one was stupid. Why had she done it? She walked towards the other wall, away from the wall through which she had entered, trying to get a feel for the prison in which she had found herself in. It seemed to take forever before her outstretched fingertips touched something solid. This seemed to be a big room, and—this was funny, the wall seemed to be a solid stone surface, rough and unhewn.

This was getting weird, almost like her dreams. But it wasn’t a dream. Her name was Collie. She was never Collie when dreaming. No. There had to be some other, weirder reason for this. She glanced around, and saw a distant flicker of a light, which she hadn’t seen before.

Slowly, she began walking towards this. More carefully this time, unsure of what she might find. Eventually she got to the unsteady flicker that was a sorry excuse for a lamp. All she could see with it was the black frame of the lamp, a key on a ribbon hanging from a hook in the wall, and a doorknob.

She tried the door, it was locked. Then she realized that the key must go with it. So, once locating the place to do so, she inserted the key, turned it, and turned the doorknob. This time it turned easily, and the door swung effortlessly away from her. The scene that met her eyes could never have been prepared for.

On one side of her was a rushing sheet of water, a waterfall, which threw rainbows onto the rock cliff on her other side. Her feet were on solid enough ground, but a lovely lake surrounded her. If it hadn’t of been for a series of stepping stones to the shore, she would have been stranded.

Beyond the lake, well flowered grass stretched for a ways, then was replaced by a forest. Not a thick, foreboding forest, but a pleasant wood, full of singing birds and such. Above her stretched a clear blue sky. The sun was rather low in one horizon.

She removed the key from the keyhole, intending to put it back on its hook, but the door suddenly swung shut. She examined the cliff and didn’t even see a crack to show where the door had been. She shrugged and put the ribbon around her neck instead.

She began to pick her way across the rocks, towards the shore. Suddenly, she heard someone call her name, “Collie!” and she lost her balance and fell in.

Welcome to the Land of Magic

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At one time, my sister's best friend was obsessed with Barbie of Swan Lake. One of our favorite games as a threesome was to make up a story together, and if the two of them didn't bring in horses to a fantasy, Kat brought in Swan Lake.

At one point, Kat and V had something of a falling out, and somehow Kat became something of my best friend. The two of us came up with the stories that have become No Refuge for a Princess, and The Eternal Queen. We drew pictures of fairies.

We came up with a sequel to Barbie of Swan Lake ... and she tried her hand at writing.

I discovered Colinda and the Swan's Secret in her bag. I was looking for her fairy notebook to see the latest ones she had drawn, and found a red notebook with a crown like the one I have in the picture above drawn on it. I asked her if I could read it, she said sure. I was impressed with it, and I asked her where she was going to go next. She confessed that she had no clue, so I sat down and helped her work out her issue. She had the story going too fast. She revealed the Swan's Secret far too soon, and finding the fairy crown had been far too easy.

After talking her through several issues, she finally decided to just drop it. Writing just wasn't her thing. I asked if she wanted me to keep writing it. She said sure, so I took her bare outline, and decided it would work  as the first book. For a while I entertained the thought of a duology, but then I discovered the identity of a third main character, and it became a trilogy.

The Land of Magic is probably my least-defined world. I know things about it, like how it came to be, its ruling system, but I don't know much about its physical rules, which is, I admit, probably what I find hardest about writing it. I know that it's ruled by two queens: the Ordinary or Human Queen, and her sister, the Magic or Fairy Queen. The Magic Queen does not marry - cannot, even, for she is incapable of that sort of love. This was a magic that the first Fairy Queen, Queen Ariana, placed on herself and those who would follow after her as sort of a make-up to her sister Queen Liana, who was supposed to stay behind in the Land of Ordinary (our world) when they left our world at the beginning of the Renascence, but their other sister, Queen Giana, was left behind instead.

Collie has no memory of her life in the Land of Magic. She doesn't remember her mother, Queen Tabitha (I have an obsession with the name Tabitha ...) her father, King Siegfried, her aunt, Queen Teresa, or her twin sister. Thing is, however, no one can remember her twin sister's name, save for Gardenia, a talking swan, and she cannot tell it. No one has seen anyone in the royal family in two years.

It's a very interesting book, even though it will probably end up not being very long. I'm considering, for a NaNo some year, just writing all three books, and then publishing them one right after another. It would be interesting.

Oh, and swing by Abby's blog, where she will be interviewing Collie.

CE Waterfall - Collie

Via Pinterest But she needs to be wearing
blue

I don't have a waterfall in my back yard, but I do have a gully, and there is a spot in the gully where, if it's raining, it turns into a waterfall.

It's not the prettiest sight, thanks to everything that gets caught there, but it's nice to be able to say that we have a waterfall in our backyard. At least when it rains.

It isn't raining today - hasn't rained since Sunday - so no waterfall. However, since my mom has sent me in quest of a canister from a nearby storage shed, I'm taking some time out to wander the extra thirty feet to the "waterfall."

A glint of gold catches my eye, however, so I leap into the gully to investigate. Yes, folks, that is how I operate.

Anyways, now that I'm in the gully, I examine the glint to discover that a crack has split the dirt wall from the floor of the gully to the lip, and wedged into that crack is a seam of gold. Pure gold, I'm willing to bet, since it's soft enough for me to dent with my thumbnail.

I bite my lip. There's one person who could have done this. Climbing out of the gully, I glance around. "Collie? Are you here?"

Of course, she could be on the other side of the golden crack, in the Land of Magic, but it doesn't hurt to have a look around. And on another hand, she could have turned herself invisible, since she can do that.

Which makes calling her name my best bet.

"Princess Colinda? Did you create a rift in my gully?"

A girl dressed in blue steps out from behind a tree on the opposite side of the gully, so I scramble over the not-so-deep portion (you know, the part before the "waterfall"). She has pale blonde hair and and her pale skin is marred by even paler scars that criss-cross every portion of exposed skin. One on her arm seems to glow for a moment, and I see her wince.

"So you don't have your memories yet?" I ask, knowing that the scars are a side effect of the amnesia that has made her forget her life as the Magic Princess.

"Will I get them back? Who - who are you? How do you know my name? People usually don't - not here." Her voice is soft, powerful, and slightly musical.

"I'm a historian, I record stories," I explain, realizing that she's one of the ones that don't know about me. "Yours is one that I'm recording ... but that's the funny thing about me. So often I kinda read ahead with history to see what is going to happen, so I don't always know what has."

She squints at me for a moment, then shakes her head. "I've long since given up trying to make sense of people," she admits. "I'll buy it."

"So, if you don't mind me asking you, where exactly in your story are you?" I sit down in the dead leaves and motion for her to sit next to me.

"You don't work for maLigthyr, do you?" she asks, drawing back in suspicion.

"Wouldn't think of it. He's not quite right in the head. And while I won't admit to being the sanest person in the world, I do know that turning people into animals just because you can isn't normal."

Something akin to a smile ghosts at one corner of her mouth as she sits down next to me. "Well, Gardenia and I just found a girl named Kallie, and Gardenia thinks that Kallie will be important."

"She will be," I say nodding.

"How?"

"You'd know if you had your memories," is all I'm allowed to say. "But until you get them back ... well, you'll just have to trust the talking swan." I sigh. "But I was kinda wishing that you'd be a bit further along in your story. It's kinda gray from this point until you meet the Bookkeeper."

"So we do find him?"

"You most certainly do. And you find your sister. Sooner than you realize, but I can't tell you where."

"You're not much help." She falls forward and buries her head in her hands.

"Well, I can't say that you're much help to me, either," I admit. "But you will find your memories, you will find your sister, and you will deal with maLigthyr. Not all at once, but it will happen. But ... while I know how it all will happen, I have no idea how you're going to get there. Some days I wonder if I was in my right mind when I stole your story from that friend."

She glances through her hair at me for a moment then shakes her head. "I'm not even sure how I'm going to get back home."

"Actually, that's easy," I tell her. "Just rub the crack down there. There's enough of your magic in it, it won't harm you to open it again. I just recommend that you take a nice long nap afterwards. You don't want to lose any more of your memories."