Wild Swans Update & Book Banquet

I have 81 pages of The Wild Swans written. Better yet, the Test Reader just got caught up this weekend and gave it her stamp of approval. Both she and I have high hopes that you all will enjoy this story. Elise and her quirky foster brothers exchange a lot of witty lines, and the story has a little more plot to it than B&B did so it sets a faster pace.

Writing news aside, before I grew ill last week I was craving fictional foods. (Think Harry Potter Butterbeer, Katniss’ Lamb Stew, Lembas bread from Lord of the Rings, are you hungry yet?) I haven’t found exactly what I’m looking for, but in my quest for fiction inspired foods I found a few websites I thought I would share with you guys

Fictional Food: This website is confusing to navigate, but it has some great Hunger Games and Game of Thrones recipes

Cook Fiction: I love that this place has great diversity in the series it pulls the foods from. There’s Bubbly Pies from the Dragon Riders of Pern, Lemon Cakes from Game of Thrones, Scooby-Doo scooby snacks, Sonic Screwdrivers from Dr. Who, and more.

Food Through the Pages: The most extensive site I found, this place has recipes for Robin McKinley’s Beauty, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and more. It also also gets props for the clean webdesign and excellent directions.

I hope this whets your appetite and gets your imagination going! Until next time; be well, Champions.

What about Wild Swans?

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY! May you eat a lot of chocolate and enjoy the day! (I’m such a juvenile, I still pass out Valentine cards to my friends. Typically I use Disney Princess themed ones.)

Moving on to more book-ish news… Since Embittered has been out for a week, I’ve been getting lots of emails wondering when Wild Swans will be available. If writing goes as well as it has been, you can expect Wild Swans to be released at the end of March. I’m going to be reaaalllyyy close to finishing it this month, but then I have to edit it, my test reader has to peek at it, Myrrhlynn has to work on the cover art, and I have a brand new editor who will be taking a whack at it.

Editing is a collaborative process, which is why it adds on almost another month. Editing is also what takes the story from “Meh” to “Ooooh.” I’m just under halfway through Wild Swans, and I’ve already gone back once to add two new characters and several new scenes. (By the time I’m done writing I will probably have gone back and cut one character and taken away a scene or two, hah-hah.) The edits help me solidify main themes of the story (For example, lying in B&B.) and go back and add hints of what doom is about to befall our poor characters next.

SO, what I’m trying to say is I swear the wait for all the extra editing will be worth it. Thanks for reading, Champions. I will see you on Monday for some more discussion!

Wild Swans: Original Tale Summary

So I’ve been getting a lot of comments between Amazon reviews and goodreads that people are hoping I will keep writing adaptions of fairy tales, as I did with Beauty and the Beast. I have news for you B&B fans, I am planning to do another fairy tale. A whole bunch of fairy tales, actually. I was going to keep it secret for a bit longer, but I’m bursting to share, so the next fairy tale I will be writing (after I finish Embittered) is a retelling of….

This is an illustration by Anne Anderson. She is a Scottish illustrator who died in 1930.

The Wild Swans

There’s actually two versions of this fairy tale, the Wild Swans (by Hans Christian Anderson) and the Six Swans (by the Brothers Grimm). The stories are nearly identical, the only thing that varies is the number of brothers and some of the details of when the sister gets married. The basic story is this: A king with many sons and one daughter is bewitched by a wicked witch and marries her–being that his wife is dead. This wicked witch wants to rule after the king dies, so she curses the sons to take on the shape of swans–although they can briefly turn human for 15 minutes (or an hour according to some versions) every night. The witch tries to curse the daughter too, but she fails and the girl flees with her brothers to a far away land.

The sister learns (typically through a fairy queen) that if she knits stinging nettles into a shirt and makes a shirt for every brother while never speaking a single word the curse will be broken. She decides to do the task–even though her brothers assure her it is impossible–and while she spends months knitting the king of the country they are staying in finds her. The king, naturally, falls in love with her at first sight. Being that she is mute and doesn’t fight back, the king is able to carry her off to the palace, intending to marry her. (My version of the story is going to stray from that line, though, as I am not a big fan of love at first sight.) One day, while the king is off riding around again, the king’s mother accuses the sister of witchcraft–because she’s always knitting and she’s got these big swans that like to flock around her–and tries to have her burned at the stake. The daughter finishes the last shirt just as the villagers are lighting the wood on fire (talk about a tight deadline) and she throws the shirts on her swan brothers, turning her royally ticked off brothers back into humans. (Let’s just say they don’t take too kindly to the whole almost burning their sister thing.) Now that she is freed from rescuing her brothers the sister is able to speak and defend herself against the claims of witch craft, which she does so just as the king returns. The king’s mother gets whacked, and the brothers and sister live happily ever after in the king’s kingdom, apparently abandoning their bewitched father.

There are several versions of this story beyond the Wild Swans and the Six Swans, but all of them follow the basic plot of the brothers getting cursed and their sister knitting shirts of stinging nettles and almost being burned at the stake. (Who accuses the sister of witch craft and why she is accused of witch craft typically varies from version to version.)

I’ve been looking forward to this story for a while because it’s one of the few fairy tales where the girl not only rescues herself, but her brothers as well. I will put my own spin on it of course, as I mentioned the plot line with the king falling in love with the mute sister is going to see some big changes because I want to use this fairy tale to illustrate the sacrifices we make for love.

Finally, as one extremely sharp eyed reader in an Amazon review has already guessed, the main cast of this fairy tale will be the seven princes and the adopted princess of Arcainia–the little country Prince Lucien was gung-ho to take over before Severin told him off. (I LOVE foreshadowing!)