On Writing

Today, I’m pleased to welcome paranormal romance author Tia Nevitt to my blog. Tia is one of my author friends. She’s the author of the novella, The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf. Take it away, Tia:

Question: Hi, Tia. Thanks for taking the time to guest blog. Please tell us about your latest release, The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf.

Tia: Hi, Jennifer! Thanks for having me.

The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf is a retelling of Snow White. With this story, I wanted a heroine who was as unique as Talia was in The Sevenfold Spell (also a novella). Therefore, I wrote it from the point of view of one of the dwarfs, who I made female. Gretchen hears about a sort of a dwarf refuge, a farm owned by dwarfs and run by dwarfs. She travels there in search of love.

And of course, she wanders right into a fairy tale. I tried to do the same thing that I did with The Sevenfold Spell — fill in plot holes, and approach the story from new angles. But the Snow White story is much more straightforward than Sleeping Beauty.

The biggest unanswered mystery is the identity of that face in the magic mirror. So I decided to make him the prince! I then tied the whole story in knots and let the characters find their own way out.

Question: What inspired you to write The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf?

Tia: After coming up with my idea for Sleeping Beauty, the confiscation of the spinning wheels resulted in the unemployment of thousands of spinsters, I brainstormed ideas for several other fairy tales. As I said in the question above, the man in the mirror was the biggest mystery. Who was he, and why did he find the evil queen so beautiful?

Question: You’ve also written another fairy tale-themed story, The Sevenfold Spell. What interests you about fairy tales?

Tia: The same sort of thing that draws me into the fantasy genre as a whole. I love stories that can fill me with a sense of wonder, or stories where ordinary people — with no powers — have the guts to take on the supernatural.

Fairy tales started out as tales for an adult audience, but I learned to love them as a child, as most people do. I didn’t read fantasy when I was a teenager or a new adult. But once I discovered it, I never went back. I write all kinds of fantasy, not just fairy tales. But I had to start somewhere!

Question: What’s your favorite fairy tale?

Tia: Beauty and the Beast. I learned that story at an older age than Cinderella, Snow White, or Sleeping Beauty. Both characters intrigued me so. I like that story because Beauty is willing to sacrifice her future for her father, and because the Beast is so tormented and convinced that he could not be loved.

Beauty is a much more mature heroine. She does not idly dream of balls, or handsome princes. She is the one who gets all the action. She saves her father, she saves the Beast, and she saves his entire household of servants.

Question: Is The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf part of a series? If so, how many stories are planned?

Tia: At least three. I am working on my Beauty and the Beast story now. In it, the time limit for the Curse has passed, and the Beast is doomed to remain a beast for all of his days. In the original version of the story, the servants were all made invisible; they were not turned into inanimate objects. Well, when the time ran out for the Beast, it also ran out for them, and they are doomed to remain invisible forever as well.

The Beast decides to look for a nonmagical way to break — or to cure — the curse.

I also have a mostly complete draft of Cinderella, but I had a hard time with the premise. Once I finish my Beauty and the Beast story — which I am quite excited about — I’ll try to tackle Cinderella again.

So three for certain, but maybe four!

Question: What are some of your favorite books and authors?

Tia: I read a wide variety of genres. An enduring favorite series of mine is Elizabeth Moon’s The Deed of Paksenarrion. The same goes for Dragonlance and its authors. More recently, I have enjoyed your novels :D, David Anthony Durham’s Acacia series, KS Augustin’s space operas, John Scalzi’s science fiction, and a recent discovery of mine is Nicole Luiken’s epic fantasy, Gate to Kandrith. I already pre-ordered the sequel!

Question: What’s next for you?

Tia: I have been working on a time travel historical that spans a range of time from modern day back to the 20s, and the Civil War. It is quite an ambitious project with a lot of research required, and I expect to work on it for another year. I also have been self-publishing a dystopian series of short stories, but I won’t do a book launch for those until later this spring, when I have the third story ready. It’s been fun, but I’m not taking them very seriously. They are highly experimental!

Beyond that, who knows? I always have way more ideas than I have time to write!

GIVEAWAY TIME

Tia has generously offered up digital copies of The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf and The Sevenfold Spell to one winner — Epub, Kindle, or PDF — winner’s choice. The giveaway is open worldwide, and the winner will be randomly chosen.

To enter, just leave a comment on this post talking about what your favorite fairy tale is.

The giveaway will be open through midnight, EST, Wednesday, March 6. The winner will be announced here on the blog on Friday, March 8.

MORE ABOUT TIA

Not even a stint in the military as an aircraft mechanic could erase Tia Nevitt’s love of fairy tales. To this day, she loves to read (and write) books that take her to another place, or another time, or both. She also dabbles in calligraphy, violin, piano and songwriting. Tia has worked on an assembly line, as a computer programmer, a technical writer and a business analyst. She lives in the southeast with her husband and daughter.

Tia’s novella, The Sevenfold Spell, won the 2012 EPIC ebook award for Fantasy.

You can find Tia online at her website, blog, Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads.

Thanks so much for being here today, Tia.