Fairy Tale Freebies

As a follow up to the ultimate fairy tale sale I hosted last week I want to inform you of all the fun fairy tale related freebies that are available on my website!

Timeless Fairy Tales Maps and Timelines - There are a lot of books in the Timeless Fairy Tales series and related works (Snow Queen and Fairy Tale Enchantress ) and this page has some beautiful maps and extremely detailed timelines to add to your reading experience.

Quizzes - Which of my fairy tale heroines do you most represent? Take the fairy tale heroine quiz and find out!

SheaCon - The dedicated Champions who organized this fan event in the past generously shared the puzzles and games they created for the event so now you can enjoy them anytime! There are multiple blog posts hosting the different games (some of the games are specific to my fairy tales) and you can find all of them linked on this page.

So Many Short Stories! - I have a related short story available for almost every single fairy tale I've written! If you want to read the shorts specific to a certain book here's the fastest way to do that:

1. Open the book of your choice from the Books page. (The Boxsets have all the related content linked for every book in the boxset.)

2. Scroll down to view the related short stories for this book. The short stories are linked to avoid spoilers.

3. Happy reading!

Coloring Pages - If you like Coloring you'll love this section! Most of the available coloring book pages are related to one of my fairy tales series and I'll let you in on a secret: I have a stockpile of pages related to the Timeless Fairy tales series and I typically release two new additions every year! My website upgrade in 2024 allowed for a new new format for this page which makes it easier to review/filter them and quickly choose between the PDF and image versions.

Reading Order for all my books - Most of my series are written to be independent but some of them overlap with each other (my fairy tales related series do this!) so this page can serve as a general guideline if you are trying to avoid spoilers between the series.

Sarcastic Summaries of the Original Fairy Tales - For most of my fairy tale retellings I wrote a companion blog post that sarcastically summarized the original fairy tale I based it on (and pointed out all the places where it gets really weird). I have a tag on my blog that groups them all together or you can check the individual book pages for a link to the matching blog post just like you would check for related short stories.

Character Interviews - I mention my bonus short stories pretty frequently but did you know I also have bonus character interviews? It's a fun chance to see the characters from across my different worlds interacting with each other!

Pinterest Boards - If you haven't been to my Pinterest lately you really need to take a visit as I've been updating my fairy tale retellings board this year, and there are new quote images related to my fairy tale stories.

Fan Discussions - And if you are looking for a place to talk about books with other passionate readers both of my communities are awesome places to do just that (Facebook Group and Discord server)!

2025 K.M. Shea Book Awards

As a "just for fun" event inspired by the official Academy Awards in early March we opened up voting for various categories across the K.M. Shea community, and here are the voting results!

First up, here's what the newsletter voted for:

Award: The Book with the Best Animal Sidekicks

Winner: Court of Midnight and Deception (Nightmares, Glooms, Shades, and Bagel the donkey) (this one won by a landslide with almost 400 votes!)

Honorable Mention goes to the Fairy Tale Enchantress series (Pegasus) and Second Age of Retha series (Pax, Trash Panda, Sinistre, Chester the pony)

The Facebook group voted for two categories:

Award: Favorite Supernatural/Magical Race

Winner: Elves (from Timeless Fairy Tales + Elves of Lessa series)

Very close second place goes to Vampires!

Award: Favorite KM Shea Physical Combat Heroine

Winner: Jade from Magic on Main Street series

Honorable Mention goes to Angelique and Gwendafyn!

Discord voted for two categories:

Award: Best Book World to Live in

Winner: Magiford

Honorable Mention: Second Age of Retha game world and the Timeless Fairy Tales

The also voted on a Magiford Beverage Brawl where participants pick their favorite beverage that matches a Magiford heroine (Coffee, Tea, Hot Cocoa, and Smoothies) and whichever gets the most votes wins!

Winner: Hot Chocolate

Runner Up: Tea

And finally, as a special bonus, I asked the audio team to pick a category and winner for one of the audiobooks and here is what they decided on!

Award: One Man Audiobook Show

Winner: Nathaniel Priestley (in King Arthur and Her Knights series)

Magiford World: Kwik Trip

In Gate of Myth and Power, I mention the gas station/convenience store "Kwik Trip," which is a Wisconsin franchise with a cult following and I realized with the final audiobook releasing later this month it would be a great chance to talk about this place more. (Note that there is an unrelated brand of stores called QuikTrip that aren't based in Wisconsin.)

Unlike a typical gas station Kwik Trip focuses on offering a wide variety of grocery items, and some of the buildings are so large they are more like small grocery stores that happen to have a gas station. They also have a wide variety of lunch-like deli items you can purchase that are reasonably fresh so many people will stop to just get food and not even bother to gas up their vehicles.

And of course they have cheap coffee (including flavored coffees) that you can purchase in extra large size which is why Leila paid them a visit. And lots of good donuts and treats too!

Here's a photo of an actual Kwik Trip donut display:

Why is Kwik Trip so popular?

Speaking as a Wisconsin resident I know from experience that the Kwik Trip gas stations tend to be cleaner (both outside and inside) than the average gas station. And they always have a free air pump in the parking lot that actually works!

They are also located everywhere in Wisconsin at this point and it's pretty common to find two of them across from each other at busy intersections, which has added to their popularity.

The company also has an over-the-top social media presence, and it's easy to find hilarious videos about them on social media. Beyond that, the cult like following of this chain is something else, and it's not that rare for average customers to do their own Kwik Trip social media posts such as wedding couples showing up for a quick photo shoot (no I'm not kidding!).

What gas stations/convenience stores are unique to your region?