Welcome to the 2018 Fairy-tale Blog Hop! (Contest is now closed.)
Thirteen fabulous fairy-tale authors have gotten together to talk about their favorite fairy tales. Follow the links at the bottom of each blog post to hop to the next author’s website.
Along the way, collect our favorite numbers to total up at the end and enter to win a print collection of our books! (There are several anthologies, debuts, and even an ARC for a BLINK YA book you can’t buy in stores yet!)
My Favorite Fairy Tale
Cinderella changed my life.
No, I was never a scullery maid, nor did I ever have evil stepsisters. (A challenging brother, yes.)
Cinderella allowed me to fulfill a dream.
Let me tell you, how.
I didn’t grow up reading fairy tales.
My mom is a reader, and so I did grow up in a house filled with books and trips to libraries and bookstores.
It was magic, being transported to another place and time to live an adventure alongside my favorite characters. As a shy kid, I found book characters easy to make friends with…even if they didn’t know me back.
My private dream was to become a writer, so I could be part of the book world I loved so much.
For many years I worked in secret, telling very few people what I wanted to do. Writing several stops and starts and “almost” published novels.
Then one day, I was given two gifts. Two ideas that merged together to form something new.
The first idea was uncovered during research on the history of department stores (for another, unpublished, novel) when I learned that until the 1940s department store window dressers were all men. Apparently, women had a curfew, at least in New York, and couldn’t work at night when the windows were changed out.
The second idea came when I saw a picture book with the same name, showing a more modern looking Cinderella sliding down a banister.
My brain went….what if Cinderella kept her dress and passed it down to her daughter? And how could I tell this story in the 1940s, so I could also talk about fashion and female window dressers?
The classic Cinderella story contains several fairy-tale messages. The one I relate to most is the unnoticed girl toiling away in secret until her fairy godmother gives her the tools she needs to change her life.
My ideas were my tools.
My transformation didn’t happen over the course of a ball at the palace, but over several years at a computer as I wrestled with an awkward timeline (I had to find a way to make the history fit…you’ll know what I mean when you read it—I didn’t make up the history, I just had to wrap the story around it.)
Eventually, a publisher bought the rights to the story, and forever Cinderella will have a special place in my heart. She made me a published author.
Thanks, Cinderella.
Here’s what the story is about:
Not all magic disappears at midnight.
Sometimes it gets passed down through the generations.
As magical heirlooms from our favorite fairy tales.
On the home front in 1944, Kate Allen wants to do her part for the war effort. She’d prefer filling in for the window dressers at the New York department store where she works, but her mother keeps sending her on auditions for roles she never gets.
When relatives arrive from war-torn Poland with a mysterious steamer trunk and an even more mysterious story, Kate’s aunt, who is suffering from dementia, tries to convince Kate she is in line to be the next keeper of the wardrobe for Cinderella’s family—the real Cinderella.
If the family secret is true, this might be the most important role Kate has ever auditioned for. Will she get to the truth before it’s forgotten?
Buy Cinderella’s Dress today to go beyond the happily-ever-after and find out what happened to Cinderella’s magical dress.
I’ve written several other books since then, but this week, after four years in print, (yeah, that was my favorite number you need to collect) the revised version of my first novel is available, with a fresh new cover.
Before you hop to the next stop, I’ve got a giveaway for you to enter. It’s for a fun summer read: The Tower Princess. I call it my Romeo and Juliet with a twist of Rapunzel. It’s a classic fairy-tale type novel with a sweet romance. Entering will sign you up to my email list, from which you can unsubscribe from at any time.
Contest is now over and winners have been notified. All of the prizes have been claimed. Congrats to:
Emily H., Amy W., Rebecca P., Juliet L., and Sarah V!
Your next stop on the fairy tale blog hop is: debut author Joanna Ruth Meyer (Before you go, did you write down my favorite number? It was mentioned in the paragraph starting with “I’ve written several other…”
