Hello, I’m Julia Day, your hostess for this stop with TEAM PURPLE!
This bi-annual event was first organized by
author Colleen Houck as a way to give readers a chance to gain access to exclusive bonus material from their favorite authors…and a chance to win some awesome prizes! So enjoy your stop here and at the other 19 stops on Team Purple. Check out the other 5 teams too, but play fast! This contest only lasts until Sunday, April 8.
First, a little about me.
- I am an autism mom, and this is Autism Awareness Month. My latest release, Fade to Us, has an autistic main character. I'm giving away a copy as part of YASH team purple. I also have a personal giveaway; enter later in this post.
- I live in North Carolina, USA, with a couple of daughters, my first husband, and so many computers I won’t even try to count (although most of them don’t work. They’re more like sculptures now.)
- I am allergic to chocolate, love ice cream, and hate cilantro!
- I’m scared of heights, I collect Christmas tree ornaments, and I buy a new pair of earrings from everywhere I visit (except Antarctica. Not a lot of gift shops there).
Next, a reminder about the YA Scavenger Hunt. For complete rules and instructions
, you can go to the
YA Scavenger Hunt - How to Hunt page.
Directions: Below, you'll notice that I've listed my favorite number. Collect the favorite numbers of all the authors on the purple team, and then add them up (don't worry, you can use a calculator!).
Rules: Open internationally, anyone below the age of 18 should have a parent or guardian's permission to enter. To be eligible for the grand prize, you must submit the completed entry form by 3 April 2018, at noon Pacific Time. Entries sent without the correct number or without contact information will not be considered.
Basically, enjoy exclusive content on each stop on the hunt, collect clues, enter personal giveaways, add up the clues (numbers), and return to the YASH site to enter for more prizes.
Here are all of the wonderful books you could win from Team Purple.
Now, introducing my guest author, F.M. Boughan.
F.M. Boughan is a bibliophile, a writer, and an unabashed parrot enthusiast. She can often be found writing in local coffee shops, namely because it’s hard to concentrate with a cat lying on the keyboard and a small, colorful parrot screaming into her ear. Her work is somewhat dark, somewhat violent, somewhat hopeful, and always contains a hint of magic."}">
F.M. Boughan is a bibliophile, a writer, and an unabashed parrot enthusiast. She can often be found writing in local coffee shops, namely because it’s hard to concentrate with a cat lying on the keyboard and a small, colorful parrot screaming into her ear. Her work is somewhat dark, somewhat violent, somewhat hopeful, and always contains a hint of magic
10 Fun Facts About Fairy Tales… and Necromancy – F.M. Boughan
I love fairy tales, in all their inceptions. From Disney’s animated classics to loose retellings to the ancient folk tales that shaped the heart of many of the versions we know today, I find them all fascinating. But most people know that fairy tales didn’t start off as the sweet stuff of modern picture books or as the sanitized versions compiled in Andrew Lang’s “Coloured” Fairy Books. Rather, the weird eeriness – and occasionally downright disturbing elements – goes even further back. Often, readers will ask me “how on earth did you end up mashing Cinderella and necromancy together?”
Well, here’s the thing… they’re both creepy as heck.
Want a glimpse into just how creepy? Here are ten fun facts (fun, alarming… same thing, right?) about the early versions of Cinderella’s story and about necromancy in 15th-century Europe (the same time period as the setting of CINDERELLA, NECROMANCER).
Enjoy!
1. The term “necromancy” in medieval Europe explicitly referred to the conjuring of demons, not to raising the dead—in fact, it was thought that the dead couldn’t actually be brought back to life, but that demons could appear to the conjuror in the form of a deceased individual and pretend to be that person. Gives a bit of new perspective to the “I see dead people” meme…
2. After the third ball in the Brothers Grimm version of Cinderella (Aschenputtel), the prince doesn’t mess around when it comes to finding the woman he “loves”… he literally smears pitch all over the steps so that her shoes will stick and she won’t be able to escape. Sadly for him, Cinderella has half a brain and simply takes off her shoe when it gets stuck.
3. The title of a real necromancy handbook—which is now lost to history—was The Death of the Soul. Just some light, pleasant afternoon reading, I’m sure.
4. Aschenputtel’s stepmother is a real piece of work—she throws two cups of lentils into the fireplace and tells Aschie that she can go to the balls if she can pick them all out. Good news for Aschie, she has friends in high places. Literally! Her bird friends do all the work for her. And if that last piece of info has you wondering if Cinderella was originally a hedge witch, well… ¯\_(ć)_/¯
5. You’ve probably heard of angel name lists or books? You might have even seen this type of thing sold at gift shops next to birthday cards or on those small racks of gum package sized tomes. Well, turns out medieval necromancers had their own angel name books… except they weren’t angel names. Ahem. They were essentially demon catalogues a necromancer could browse through to find the spirit whose abilities corresponded to his nefarious needs. Handy!
6. In the Aschenputtel version, the famous shoes are made of gold, not glass. And when the prince slips the shoes on the stepsisters’ feet, apparently lover-boy is somewhat lacking in his observation skills. Aschie’s bird friends have to be the ones to say “Hey, dude? That shoe is, uh, filling up with blood…” after the stepsisters cut off parts of their feet—some toes, a few slices of their heels—to make the shoes fit. Talk about dedication to climbing the social ladder, though!
7. Some grimoires contained love spells for necromancers who wanted to perform “tricks” to make their intended fall in love with them like… holding fire in one’s shirt. Or making a giant flame explode in someone’s face. Or magically causing someone to strip. I… have a feeling that these didn’t quite work as intended.
8. Hey, remember those bird friends I mentioned? By “friends” I meant “minions of revenge,” because when it’s time for Aschenputtel and the prince to get married, our heroine seems to be doing the noble thing by forgiving her stepsisters and allowing them to be bridesmaids at her wedding… except that the birds swoop out of the sky and peck out her stepsisters’ eyes in revenge. Ah, family.
9. While blood was indeed a common “sacrifice” used in a conjuring to summon a demon, one manuscript from Prague had a spell that told the necromancer to offer coal, bread, cheese, three shoeing-nails, barley, and salt as “presents” for the demons. I mean, blood sounds great and all, but who wouldn’t take bread and cheese instead? Much tastier.
10. Here’s the thing about fairy godmothers—Aschenputtel’s FG wasn’t a fairy, or even a person, or anything, really. Aschie actually was her own FG to begin with, in the sense that she planted a twig (a gift from her father after a business trip) on her mother’s grave, watered it with her tears, and it grew to become a magic tree that granted her every wish. So why she didn’t just wish herself into winning the prince in the first place—or, you know, ask for better circumstances for herself that didn’t involve a possessive, trap-setting fiancĆ©—is a mite perplexing. (Actually, it’s not, considering the source material. Thanks, patriarchy!)
If you have any favorite fun facts about
fairy tales (or, uh… ancient magic or weird historical practices!) go ahead and
share those in the comments below!
About
Cinderella, Necromancer by F. M. Boughan...
A young woman’s discovery of an ancient, hidden necromancy manual gives her the strength and power to fight back against her abusive, controlling stepfamily. Ellison wants to teach her stepsisters a lesson by learning how to use the necromantic tome she discovers in the secret passages of her father’s mansion. Despite her new and terrible secret power, her world begins to crumble as her younger brother falls incurably ill, the house staff begin to disappear, and her stepmother tears away all of Ellison’s material connections to her father and late mother.
Ellison is forced to spend her days as a servant for her stepmother and stepsisters, who threaten her brother’s life if she refuses. Even making the acquaintance of kind, attractive Prince William when she sneaks out to visit her mother’s grave does nothing to lessen the blow when her stepmother refuses to allow Ellison to attend an unexpectedly announced palace festival—but what she can do is fight back by secretly conjuring spirits to take revenge. As her stepmother’s cruelty grows, Ellison’s control over the spirits weakens and soon Ellison must face the question: Is her stepmother is the true monster…or is she?
Thank you to F.M. Boughan for joining us today! Here's where you can BUY THE BOOK. You can also find her on social media. (and here's a quick peek at the cover of Cinderella's Inferno!)
One last thing before you go...
As I mentioned earlier, it's Autism Awareness Month. One of the heroines in FADE TO US is autistic. I have a personal giveaway of one copy of FADE TO US, choice of print or e-book. Enter in Rafflecopter below.
You'll answer a question about my favorite "team". (Hint: the color of my YASH team.)
a Rafflecopter giveaway
So, I guess that's it for this stop on the hunt. No, wait. I've forgotten to include the number 34 somewhere. Better go back and fix that.
In December, you'll find a lot of great deals on books, especially e-books. So send your loved ones the gift of discovery, new future-favorite authors, travel without leaving their homes, and worlds or ideas they haven't known.
