(Note: Tia is giving away a copy of her new book, The Sevenfold Spell, to one lucky commenter! All you need to do is leave a comment on this post.) Thanks, Shaun, for being the only guy to host me on this blog tour. For previous installments, and to read all the excerpts from The Sevenfold Spell in order, pop over to Jenny Schwartz’s Acquiring Magic blog (you might have to scroll down) and hop along. Here is the complete schedule. I wrote a script for a book trailer and I had a lot of fun with it. I got it perfected and ran it by my husband, who laughed in all the appropriate places. But then I realized that I had a problem. This funny script was totally out-of-sync with my somewhat melancholy story, even if the story does have some humorous moments. But! All is not wasted, because I thought it would be a fun blog post. Here it is, all formatted like a script! Well, kinda, because I don’t want to have to give poor Shaun fits trying to get the formatting right. *** INT: BEFORE TIA’S BOOKCASE TIA Ok! Here I am, filming my book trailer for The Sevenfold Spell! I’m all made up, wearing nice clothes and am sitting next to my overflowing bookcase, and I’m hoping this won’t be too embarrassing. Looks left, right, and left. TIA Ok, too late. Cut scene. TIA My name is Tia Nevitt, and I’m the author of The Sevenfold Spell. Hold up nook, preloaded with cover art. TIA Here it is on my nook. Because it’s an ebook, you know. As in digital! As in twenty-first century! As in cheap—it costs only 2.99, less than a cup of coffee! Looks offscreen. TIA Huh? Talk about the story? Oh, yeah. Good idea. The story. Got it. Cut scene. Holds up color flat of cover art. TIA The Sevenfold Spell is a retelling of the sleeping beauty story. Hence the spinning wheel. Actually, spinning wheels were the inspiration for this story. I have this little girl, you see, and like any modern mom, I’ve been filling her head with fairy tales. One day, we found an old VHS copy of Sleeping Beauty, made by a certain giant mogul movie company that I won’t name. We went home and put it in. It has this lengthy intro with an unbelievable amount of backstory and info-dumping. You know, the kind every writing book says to avoid. If it had gone across an editor’s desk, it would have been an instant reject. However, this was a Giant Mogul Movie Company, so it made it on screen. And in the purplest prose you can imagine, an intoning voice says something like this, Affecting deep voice. “The king, still fearful of his daughter’s life, did then and there decree that every spinning wheel in the kingdom should on that very day be burned.” Cut scene, normal voice. TIA So I’m left here, thinking. What? Burn all the spinning wheels? Isn’t the very word spinster derived from one who spins on spinning wheels? As in, most of them have no man to depend upon, and must spin to eat? What the hell are they supposed to do now? Cut scene. Closer up. TIA And besides, didn’t one spinster defy the ban? After all, despite the heartless law, Aurora still manages to find the only spinning wheel in the kingdom and prick her finger on it, which is about the most ridiculous manner of death ever invented in the history of fiction. Cut scene. Closer up. TIA So some spinster, somewhere, had to have a spinning wheel. And assuming she’s not a patsy of the evil fairy, she did it in defiance of the ban. Cut scene. Resume original distance. TIA And that’s who my story is about. Cut scene. Roll book credits to excerpt from Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty. INT: BACK BEFORE TIA’S BOOKCASE New scene. Thoughful look. You know, those fairies totally stole the movie from Princess Aurora. Final book credit. *** What do you think? Should I start filming? Stick to writing fiction? To help you decide, here’s an excerpt from The Sevenfold Spell. This excerpt will give you some idea of why the above script might have given you the wrong impression about the story. *** On one such day, shortly before I turned eighteen, he interrupted his own description of the birth of a calf to say, “We should get married, you know.” I gawked at him. “Why?” He shrugged, and then blushed to the tips of his ears. “We get on well. You don’t seem like a henpecker, and I’m not likely to be an adulterer.” I understood what he was trying to say. I was plain and he was homely. Neither of us was likely to find anyone else. As I considered his suggestion, I tried to imagine kissing him. It seemed like such a strange idea. Then I tried to imagine doing some of those other things that I had heard the young married women talk about, and failed. But still, he wanted me, even if it was only in an “I’ll never find anyone else” sort of way. And I knew how he felt. The savings for my dowry had, in recent years, transformed into saving for my future. Besides, as he pointed out, we got on well together. Many of the couples in and around Tallow’s End didn’t even have that much. “I guess it’s a good idea,” I said. He looked satisfied. And even—much to my surprise—happy. *** I’d love to hear what you think of either the script or the excerpt. Sometime tomorrow, I’ll pick a random commenter for a free ecopy of The Sevenfold Spell. *** For more info about Tia, check out her website. Here are some details about the book: Have you ever wondered what happens to the other people in the fairy tale? Things look grim for Talia and her mother.
