​I posted a couple of weeks ago with a list of my books correlated to Disney Princess movies. What I wanted to do was use these motifs to move past a general “idea” about the book's identities to examine specific themes in each story. Comparison to these movies is not a final definition for my books. Rather it is a start towards eliminating vagueness about each book's personality. Since these are children's movies, and childhood comes first in life, perhaps it makes sense to begin by examining the simple concepts that appear in them.

So this is a follow-up post where I’ll give a bit more detail on what I’m talking about here and why I chose each movie for each book. To keep the post from getting too long since there are 10 little summaries, I've broken it into two posts with five books for each post. (The Palladia Series has 2 books in it, so that is five in this post. It just looks like 4.)

• The Birthday Present is a set of two stories that are essential complements to each other. Since "Millhaven Castle" had more audience exposure than "Birthday Present" in the past, they appear significantly different but they still belong together. In Beauty and the Beast, Belle and the Beast are equally compelling within the story and their surface dissimilarities at first hide a really true connection.
• Facets of Fantasy is a book of episodic novellas that seem unconnected. Because they are disjointed, they consist of situations that vary a lot from wistful and pristine to comedy to slightly saddening scenes of confrontation or betrayal. All of these remind me very much of the wide diversity of storytelling elements in Tangled.
• The Palladia Series has gradually evolved from the way it originally appeared and is in continual development as it seems there’s more to discover in it. As one of the most popular and most frequently retold fairy tales of all time, Cinderella always has some new spinoff going on, beyond Disney animated sequels and a live-action update to numerous independent movies and books over the decades. That glass shoe in blue light is a pretty compelling image.
• Victoria: A Tale of Spain has a smart female protagonist in an unusual plot, and it combines creepy drama and wild comedy pretty equally. The Princess and the Frog has similar components in terms of hopping (pun intended) around a variety of scenes from swanky to frumpy and like Victoria it's a "smaller" story you might not look at first. But if you do get around to it, you could be surprised what's in it.

I'll do a similar summary for the remaining 5 books in a later post.

And there will be more updates

This is the third installment in the In a Nutshell series of blog posts, which takes some of the central five characters from each book and explores them in a bit more detail. Since the two Palladia books are in a series, I’ll explore them in one post. But there were originally 10 characters discussed regarding these books. So I’ll do five and bundle a couple of them under a shared function in the story.

Sidney shows something that’s important to remember about City of the Invaders—most of the real story takes place behind the scenes and in corners adjacent to the main plot. Sidney's actions in the story embody this truth as he does not appear until the final chapters, but it turns out he has orchestrated the outcome the whole time. He has almost no lines, but what he does say is really terse and to the point. Because he's now in charge, there's little need to say more, and there's a formality and elegance to the way he speaks as he drops in to say hello to these kids he's about to move out of their world into his. 😊

Consuela is vital to the companion story, which is named after her. We are shown few women or girls among the Invaders and they are described as near crime and often not respectable. Consuela appears at least somewhat attractive and has enough useful skills to get hired by a wealthy retired lady and blend in with her boss's friends. Her backstory isn't really known in the book other than that where she came from entire houses could have the same monetary value as the dresses given her by Miss Plummer! But her past actually includes a hidden link to Sidney.

Bruce and Mocha are two teenage starlets who bring the social world of the EC into each book. Although neither of them speak much, what they do say is the center of the scenes in which they appear. Mocha enjoys perfecting and cultivating her creative talent, while Bruce is more action-oriented and holds his own when shooting erupts during a stage performance. He has put a lot of investment into his life in the theater, even if he thinks it's somewhat boring, and others can rely on him to come through.

Miss Plummer appears at first to be mostly a plot device who brings with her a group of friends. These friends believe she does not see them because she does not stop them. As they bubble on the surface, all are too quick to assume they know things about the others—whether Amy really wants them to visit Mocha, whether Rena is really interested in books, and whether Rachel sees more than she pretends. But they don't know much about their elderly benefactor, as is shown by her strange move to make a confidant out of a street girl. Like all the EC, her relationships with the Invaders can be subtle.

And there will be more updates.

This week The Test of Devotion is on sale as part of a nice collection of discounted historical fiction books. All books are priced at $1.99 or less and the sale includes both historical romance and more general historical fiction. Genres include Regency, Christian, and Western. So whatever you prefer (or all of them if you love to soak up lots of historical!) follow this link to scout out some great new authors. I don't see as many sales of historical books compared to other genres on StoryOrigin, so this isn't one to miss.

This Merry Summertime's preorder phase is complete and the book is now live on Amazon. I have enrolled it in KU for one cycle, which means at this time it can be read for free if you have Kindle Unlimited. I’m still preparing the book for Apple, Kobo, etc, and KU should open up reading options for some of you in the meantime.

There is also a print edition which you can check out here for those of you who dig the good old-fashioned smell of paper. Just follow the link.

I look forward to posting about the five central characters and digging down into these stories a little bit more in the next couple months. When you know what kind of story you’re telling, it’s much easier to articulate that story to an audience so they can respond to it and locate elements that interest them. But while I have a general idea for how the book is positioned, since it’s new it is also good to let it get out there for the next couple weeks so responses can play a part in putting together exactly where this book falls in the plane of my publishing.

Here is the blurb again if some of you missed last month’s post about the book’s release:
​
This Merry Summertime is an anthology of seven comedy shorts. 4 of them (Sarcophagus; In the End the Story Ended; The Destiny of Princes; and A Matter of Life and Hair) are entertaining scripts that gently satirize the genres of paranormal fantasy, literary classics, silent film, and western romance while providing fresh takes and strong characters to tell these archetypical kinds of stories. The other 3 (Ella Substituted; Movies at the Beach; and Everwood) are short stories that use comedy adventure and mild fantasy elements to explore family life and young women’s place in the world. The theme of the book is reconciliation and renewal as the characters traverse through fiction tropes to find eventual peace and meaning in their lives and the stories celebrate youth, especially for girls, but for everyone who has happy memories of a time in their lives when life was an eternal—and sometimes hilarious—summer. ​​

And there will be more updates.