Great News!

Finally!

Isolt's Enchantment, The Girl Who Believed in Fairy Tales, and Beautiful Beautiful are available at barnesandnobles.com! YAY! For years, we've been unable to offer Nook Readers free books—without going through a convoluted process which ... well ... I won't bore you with the details.

But this week, Barnes & Nobles has updated their policy and now Nook Readers can grab these amazing reads for free. (Android Readers they're available at GooglePlay, iPad & iPhone Readers they're available at Apple's iBooks store, Kindle Readers they're available at Amazon, Kobo Readers they're available in the Kobo store!)

Isolt's Enchantment is a prequel to Daughter of Light, although many readers enjoy reading it after they have read the first book in the trilogy, Half Faerie.

The slim novel is a collection of tales chronicling the historical events which have seeded the looming battle between Dark and Light in the enchanted world—the battle being the apocalyptic threat the eighteen-year-old Melia must face in her epic quest.

The tales are interwoven with the moving and inspiring story of Ryder's early years. An orphan adopted by the priests of Idonne, Ryder is determined to overcome his rootless past and safeguard the Whole from Umbra, a sinister consciousness dwelling in the Void.

Half Faerie and Half Mortal are currently available at all online book sellers.

War & Grace Update: I'm still cranking out the first draft of War & Grace. When I began writing this final book in the trilogy, I guesstimated it would be approximately 120,000 to 150,000 words. Well ... I've just passed 150,000 and have approximately seventeen more chapters to write! This book has been a huge challenge for me, and when I realized it was going to be bigger than either Half Faerie or Half Mortal, I freaked out! Should it have been published as a series rather than a trilogy? Bites nails. I turned to my trusted inspiration, The Lord of the Rings. How many total words were in that trilogy? Since you can find everything on the internet these days, I was able to find the exact word count of each LOtR installment at the LOTR Project:

Fellowship of the Ring: 188,000
The Two Towers: 157,000
The Return of the King: 137,000
Total: 482,000

I compared those word counts to the word counts in Daughter of Light:

Half Faerie: 120,000
Half Mortal: 150,000
War & Grace: 190,000 (yep!) (current estimate)
Total: 460,000

As far as word count, when compared to LOtR, DOL works as a trilogy! YAY! With that concern out of the way, revising my time schedule has been the remaining hurdle. As the story has taken some surprising turns, I've had to hunker down and accept: The first draft will be complete ... when the first draft is complete! I'll continue to post updates ... but please rest assured, I'm thrilled with the story up to this point and am committed to writing an enchanting, action-packed, and original end to Melia's story.

So ... Nook Readers, pick up a copy of Isolt's Enchantment for free!

The Girl Who Believed in Fairy Tales is a prelude to my Once Upon a Time Today collection. Throughout my life, many friends have said, "You should write a story about your life." Ugh, is pretty much how I feel whenever I hear that. However, I have loved fairy tales since I heard my first one as a child and have found them to be instructive, inspiring, and ... just plain great escapes. In TGWBFT, I share three specific times when fairy tales helped me navigate the dark woods of my own  psyche and helped me to: survive a wicked witch, transform overwhelming desire, and recognize that a duck trying to be a swan ... probably really isn't a bird at all!

Beautiful Beautiful is the first novella in the the Once Upon a Time Today collection.  OUTT are fairy tales retold as contemporary stories for "those who have already left home." In BB, a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale, Beautiful, a mother analyzes her own past experience and perspective on beauty as she spins extemporaneous bed time stories for her young daughter.

So why offer these books for free?

To allow readers a risk-free glimpse into my writing world!

Enjoy!
Heidi

Win a Horrific Fairy Tale!

Sixteen-year-old Daisy Wright shimmers through life in bright-colored tennis shoes and Salvation Army dresses, always a half-size too large. She sweeps loops of her dirty-blonde hair into a rat’s nest of spirals and braids. Her cherry-vanilla lip gloss accents the natural smudges beneath her eyes and the chipped nail polish on her fingernails never matches.

Daisy’s only treasure is an iPod. Between every class, the buds burrow into her ears.

Lily recognizes her classmate’s messy magnetism as a look she can never pull off. Perhaps she’ll eat Daisy’s soul instead. — Excerpt from I Am Lily Dane

Win A Print Edition!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

I Am Lily Dane

by Heidi Garrett

Giveaway ends March 04, 2015.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

I Am Lily Dane by Heidi Garret

I'm so excited! Guess what is coming in February 2014?

ABOUT I Am Lily Dane:

Lily Dane is a bright light. A spiritually barren, consuming flame, she befriends girls whose inner lives are rich with dreams and compelling desire. Their unapologetic souls fascinate her. However, Lily’s interest in her peers isn’t friendly, she’s obsessed with the machinations of crushing their spirits.

Lily also has a shadow who is sentient. A freak of nature? An abomination? Who knows? But Lily’s shadow is consumed with stopping the emotional and psychological devastation its host always leaves in her wake.

I Am Lily Dane, A Horrific Fairy Tale is a psychologically dark retelling of Han’s Christian Andersen’s “The Shadow".

Once Upon a Time Today

How I Retold Hans Christian Andersen's "The Dryad"

The Tree Hugger, a Dystopian Fairy Tale is a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Dryad.”. I absolutely love the idea of spirits whose lives are connected with trees. However, in the original tale, the dryad is flighty (really?) and curious. As is often the case in fairy tales, that curiosity doesn’t go unpunished.

But I ask you: What is wrong with wanting to see more of the world?

Nothing!

So, on those two counts, I altered the tale. Rather than the flighty creature in Andersen’s tale, I believe a nature-spirt born with a direct relationship to trees would be steady, solid, focused, and determined. Thus, Mags was born. More apt to be silent and solitary, sturdy and resilient than whimsical and capricious.

And what about that trip? The fact that Andersen’s dryad got punished for her curiosity and sense of adventure just didn’t sit well with me. I wanted my tree hugger to find joy at the end of her journey, to rise above her trials and tribulations. Mags is also curious when she leaves home. But her curiosity is driven from a deep wound. And though her journey isn’t characterized by whimsy, there are some wild woods and a bit of enchantment along the way.

The third novella in my Once Upon a Time Today collection, The Tree Hugger is now available.

The Tree Hugger on Pinterest

To celebrate this new release, all three novellas and the prelude to the Once Upon a Time Today collection, are $0.99.

What a perfect time to get your fairy tale fix!

How I Retold Han's Christian Andersen's "Beautiful"

Since the third tale in my Once Upon a Time Today collection, The Tree Hugger, will be releasing on August 26th, I thought I'd do a series on how I retold each tale. I'll begin with Beautiful Beautiful the first tale in the collection, which is will be free on Amazon August 20th through 23rd, so pick up a copy if you don't already have one!

I chose Han's Christian Andersen's "Beautiful" for the first retelling in my collection because beauty is something that has always moved and fascinated me, it's one of my obsessions. I do believe that whether one wishes to acknowledge it or not, beauty has a lot of power. However, the question of what is beautiful, is very personal. And though our perceptions of beauty are influenced by our families and culture, we all ultimately perceive the beautiful distinctly.

You see, I could go on and on...

In Andersen's tale, a male sculptor is besotted with a beautiful but quiet young lady. He misinterprets her reticence as depth and proceeds to marry her. As he lives with her, he discovers his wife's lack of speech isn't so much that "still waters run deep", more that she's rather passive and insipid. His awareness of her nature comes too late. It doesn't help that the young lady's overbearing mother moves in with the newlyweds.

I won't go into the rest of the tale here [SPOILER ALERT], but suffice it to say that by the end of the tale, the sculptor's eye for beauty has altered and matured.

To make this tale contemporary, I chose a female protagonist, Kerrin Mayham. She needed to be driven by beauty, so a film director seemed like the perfect profession. I wanted to remain true to the protagonist misjudging the interior of someone who was physically beautiful. Enter aspiring actor Anthony Zorr.

While he doesn't have an overbearing mother, he does have an aggressive agent in Marni Lamb. The story unfolds from there.

I added the narrative frame after the core story was written because I wanted to add another layer of enchantment to the tale. Allowing Kerrin to create a fairy tale by drawing from the experiences in her life, allowed me to recreate one of the special memories I shared with my own mother who seemed to spin the most fantastical tales out of nothing when I was child. But who knows? Perhaps she was drawing from the well of her experience too.

You're Invited: Fairy Tales Eclectic

Love all things fairy tale? So do we! Fairy Tales Eclectic is a new Goodreads group where we will be discovering, discussing and curating the best new fairy tales, fairy tale collections, fairy tale retellings, and fairy tale influences.

Best news? You're invited! So come by and say Hi! While you're there, tell us your favorite fairy tale. You can also add links to any fairy tale-themed blog post you've written, and create new topics for all your favorite favorite fairy tale reads. If you're an author, you can announce your fairy-tale-influenced new releases, sales, and freebies.

Hope to see you there! Heidi

Dreaming of the Sea is Now Available!

ABOUT Dreaming of the Sea:

Years ago when her mother traded her to the Sea Witch for a love potion, she became the witch’s apprentice. Now Gia Chantal must find her own apprentice. If she doesn’t, the Devil won’t take her soul when she dies, and she’ll spend eternity tormented for every spiritual crime she’s ever committed. However, it’s the 21st century, and Gia doesn’t know where to begin when it comes to finding her replacement. She’ll turn to social media mastermind Cole—an exiled mer prince—to help her.

Ten-year-old, Miriam, an orphan with visionary tendencies, sought refuge in a convent to escape a life on the streets. Now a young woman, the walls and rules that have kept her safe for over a decade feel constricting. When she comes across the ad to be the wealthy Gia’s caretaker, she’s never wanted anything more in her life… until she meets Cole.

Dreaming of the Sea is a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. In the original tale, after falling in love with a human prince, the little mermaid yearns to win his love—and gain an immortal soul—thus her bargain with the sea witch…

In this contemporary retelling, after refusing to heed a merman's warnings, a young woman will make a different kind of bargain with the Sea Witch...

~ EXCERPT ~

She was seven years old when the first mermaid came to their lair—a devastating encounter never to be forgotten. Gertrude had never fathomed herself as hideous, until she gawked at the mermaid’s silky hair, smooth complexion, and glimmering fins. In a blink, happy oblivion deserted the sea witch’s apprentice.

After the young girl took the potion that would transform her fins into human legs, Gertrude was full of questions for Beulah.

“Why are we so ugly?” she asked.

“Witches must be fierce creatures.” Beulah nodded towards the graceful form of the retreating mermaid. “Who would be afraid of something like that?”

She had a point, but Gertrude had already decided the mermaid’s beauty was another kind of spell. Everything and everyone stopped to stare at her. Certainly, the power to garner such attention was no small thing. Gertrude began to wonder: If her hair was smooth and flowing, not snake-like, and her complexion was fair, not pocked and scarred; if her form was comely, not in the shape of a blob with crooked hands and teeth protruding… perhaps her mother wouldn’t have traded her in the first place.

It set Gertrude to dreaming.

Beulah, who’d been enticed into her apprenticeship by promises of power when she was a young, impoverished girl whacked Gertrude on the side of the head. “Be grateful for what you’ve got.” She smashed a handful of fried sea beetles into her mouth. “There’s lots of girls who’d be glad to take your place. Your mother did you a favor bringing you to me early on. You’ve got lots of time to study and develop your cunning. By the time I’m gone, you’ll be one of the most powerful sea witches there ever was.”

Gertrude wished the thought made her more happy. “Why did the mermaid want to trade her shining fins for a pair of legs?” she asked. “I could understand it better, if she had a black snake tail like you and me.”

Beulah cuffed her again. “Nothing’s wrong with our tails, girl.”

By now, the back of Gertrude’s head and her jaw smarted. “But why did she want legs?”

“She’s fallen in love with some human. Folks fall in love, they’re willing to sacrifice everything.” Beulah let out a belch. It came out as a yellow-green gaseous cloud that hung in the water between her and Gertrude. “If you ask me, the mermaid wanted to make the trade because she’s stupid.”

“But she gave you her beautiful voice. What are you going to do with it?”

“The day will come when its best use will become clear to me. Until then—” Beulah ran her finger over a pile of bottles filled with rays of fluorescent gold, blue, green, and pink. “I’ll just be hoarding it, because I don’t like to let go of anything. You never know when it might come in handy.”

Once Upon a Time Today

Immortal Souls & Such...

Yesterday, I wrapped up Dreaming of the Sea, my retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. As I'm preparing to send it out to some beta readers, I'm curious as to what they'll think about it. It was a challenging retelling for me to write. When I first read the original fairy tale, I was surprised that the central theme was the mermaid's quest for an immortal soul. Yes, there was the romance with the prince, but the purpose of that was to gain an immortal soul as in Andersen's tale, mer people have no souls.

Photo credit: Berlin based artist Svenja Schmitt creates highly impressive and vibrant colorful art work using different properties like feathers, beads, emeralds, sea stars, insects, and colored contact lenses.

As I was creating my world and the story of my retelling, I kept getting stumped. I had to go back and read the original tale several times before I could really accept that the core of the story was so deeply religious. Myself, I'm not a member of any organized religion, although I'm certain there is meaning to our lives. I'm also sure that what we don't see in this life, is infinitely more powerful than what we do see, and that there is some superior organizing intelligence in existence. I know, sounds vague, and  I've come to almost hate the term spiritual because it conjures such a vast diaspora of beliefs...

Personally, I like to keep things simple.

When I finally accepted that the winning of an immortal soul was the crux of Andersen's tale, I pondered upon how to "turn that on its head."

What about the losing of an immortal soul?????

Oh, yes, I loved that idea.

So in my retelling of The Little Mermaid, rather than having my main character be a mermaid seeking to gain an immortal soul, one of the central characters in Dreaming of the Sea, Miriam, is a human at risk of losing her immortal soul...