The Princess & I Blog Tour: Day One

Hello and welcome to day one of the blog tour. I'm thrilled to the bottom of my shoes...*checks feet* Oh, ok, so I'm actually barefoot. I'm thrilled to my toes? *cough* Moving on then. 

Today, I'm joined by Jesseca Wheaton (click on her name if you want to read a review, see my book in the spotlight, and watch try to answer her difficult questions in an interview) and Liv K. Fisher (click on HER name if you want to see another spotlight and lots of questions you may want to see the answers too...just saying) to tell you that my book is going to be available to buy in only FIVE DAYS. :O Am I freaking out? Maybe. Just a little bit. 

My goal for the next five days is to give you a little bit of the background and sneak peeks into the behind the scenes of my book each day. You'll get to see some of what I went through during the writing and editing process, the original inspiration, and get to "meet" some of my characters!!! Ready for the outline? 

(I thought I should give an outline since that's what all good books start with, right?) 

Day one (TODAY!): The background and beginning of "The Princess and I"

Day Two: Inspiration

Day Three: Research

Day Four: Meet the cast!

Day Five (RELEASE DAY): Looking into the future

AND...all of that will be spoiler free!! (I know you're wondering how I'm going to pull that off...well, you'll just have to come and see! ;) 

Before I dive right into day one...here's the beautiful cover for you all to oooooo and aaahhhh over again. 

*five minutes later...* OH MY GOODNESS I'M WRITING A BLOG POST RIGHT NOW!!! Focus, Rebekah! Focus. Ok. I got this. 

So, what started this book? What made me want to write a book about a princess's lady-in-waiting? 

Ever since I was a little girl, I've loved the old fairy tales. Cinderella, Snow White, Rumplestiltskin, The Princess & The Pea, Sleeping Beauty, Beaty and the Beast, etc. Not the movies, mind you, but the actual, original, STORIES. They fascinated me. I was intrigued by how each tale was so similar, yet completely different from the last. 

When I was about twelve, I wrote the first three chapters of what would become "The Princess & I", determined at the time to create my own fairy tale. However, due to my scattered self, I somehow got distracted with other stories (namely "The Silver Flower" and "Alice & Alyssa") which made me completely forget about my story...

Until, I discovered the file FOUR YEARS LATER when I had just turned sixteen. (I know, I know. Cringe with me.) Anyways, I retread what I had written all those years ago and decided to have that be my next project since I had just completed writing "The Silver Flower" and "Alice & Alyssa". 

But, the story took a turn away from the fairy tale it had started out to be as I continued building the plot and polishing the beginning to fit better to my new plan. I pulled more from my love of Medieval history than my girlish delight in fairy tales in the writing of this older version. Right away, I added sword fighting (I had just finished watching the black and white Zorro television series...so obviously swordfighting was needed) and a friend for my main characters. (Enter William Price!) This added five to six chapters to the three I had originally.

My story would be put again on the back burner as I started the editing process for "Alice & Alyssa" and about that time I again got distracted by my multiple story ideas. "Beyond the Galaxy" was started about this time, and I completed six shorter stories. "Thistle the Dragon", it's sequel "Thistle & Friends", "The Magic Saber", "Into the Future", and two holiday stories "A Precious Gift" and "God Will Provide". Yes, I was busy. And all that time, my poor story waited patiently for me to get back to it. 

Finally, I heard about Camp NaNo from a friend in the spring time of last year (you know who you are) and I decided to try it out. I searched through my archives for a story that was both unfinished and had a rough outline I would be able to follow to the end. Guess which one was the only story that fell under that category? Yep. "The Princess & I" was found again. 

I threw myself into writing it, and wrote over half the book in the three months of Camp NaNo topping out my word count goal at over 40,000 words. Though I failed miserably at the Word Wars (let's just say I don't write well under pressure) it helped SO much to have a goal and reach it. I was able to FINALLY finish writing the first draft of "The Princess & I" in November of 2016. 

So, what started as a twelve-year-old's dream to write a fairy tale ended as an eighteen-year-old's dream to complete a novel. Even though it DID take me six years to get around to it. XD 

There you have it. The complete history of how "The Princess & I" came to be. I hope you enjoyed it! Come back tomorrow if you want to hear more about the different things that inspired different parts of my story. :D