Dancing & Doughnuts ~ Interview

I am absolutely delighted to bring you all an interview with the lovely Rachel Kovaciny today.  But first I would like to apologize for the lateness of this post and if anything shows up weird or doesn't come through.  I've been having internet issues.

My questions will be in boring old black.

Rachel answers in purple.

Hello, Rachel!  Very glad to have you here today!

I'm very glad to be here! 

I greatly enjoyed Dancing & Doughnuts and I'm glad I have the chance to ask you a few questions about it. 

Yay!  I'm glad you enjoyed it 😀 🙂  I had a ton of fun writing it.

 

First question.  What "got you started" with writing fairytale re-tellings?

 

I actually had the idea for a western retelling of "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" six or seven years ago.  But I wasn't sure anyone would be interested in fairy tales retold to feature cowboys.

But then Elisabeth Grace Foley wrote "Corral Nocturne," her version of Cinderella, and it was such fun to read.  And when a writer I know, Hayden Wand, won the "Five Enchanted Roses" contest from Rooglewood Press, I thought, "Hey, I could enter the next contest of theirs."

But when they announced the next fairy tale contest would be for retellings of "Sleeping Beauty," I was like, "Oh.  Never mind."  Because I've just got a lot of issues with that fairy tale.

But... I got an idea for a western version of it, and I realized I could FIX a lot of the things that bug me about that fairy tale, so I wrote my own version, which eventually became "The Man on the Buckskin Horse," which won the contest and got included in their "Five Magic Spindles" anthology.

(There, I'm done.  Sorry, that got long!)

 

As a lover of Westerns and fairytales, I'm glad you decided to give it a whirl!

 

Thanks! 

 

You're welcome.

I was wondering though, why westerns?

 

Ahhhhh, why westerns specifically.

 

Yes.

 

Because I love them.  I grew up watching old cowboy movies and TV shows with my dad, and I used to dream of owning my own ranch in Texas.  Westerns are absolutely my favorite genre to watch, and I love learning about the history of that era.  So in 2012, I started writing a YA western, my first western story in probably a decade.  And it felt like HOME.  Everything about writing that book just felt RIGHT.  By the time I was finished with the first draft, I realized I didn't want to write anything but westerns.  And I basically haven't.

I feel that westerns are America's mythology, and they really fit with fairy tales in a neat way.

Both westerns and fairy tales tend to teach the audience lessons about life, morality, and human nature. 

 

I couldn't agree more!  I've actually wanted to write western fairytale re-tellings myself.

I had the idea of a town where there both fairytale re-tellings and Jane Austen re-tellings.

 

I LOVE THAT.

 

Thank you! 

 

I think Jane Austen retellings in the old west would work superbly.  Actually, Cloaked has a bit of a Northanger Abbey vibe to it.  😉

 

You just make all the large land owners into large ranchers!

I have yet to read that story.  Is that your Red Ridinghood re-telling?

 

Precisely! 

The eras aren't that different -- only about 70 years apart -- so a lot of the mores and conventions would be so similar.

Yup!  That's the Little Red Riding Hood one.

 

Very true.

Is there a specific event or story that you can point to as the inspiration for D&D?

 

Hmmmmmmm.

Well, like I said, I got the idea for it probably in 2012 or 2013.  It's been a while.  I do know that just the idea of the main character being a soldier home from the war is what first made me think, "Hey, this could be a Civil War veteran!  This could be a western!"

But more recently, sometime in the spring or summer of 2017, I read something about dance halls that taught me that dance halls were NOT brothels, but were places where respectable people could meet and dance, and that really made me go, "Oh!  Twelve dancing sisters could work at a dance hall!"

And the story kind of snowballed from there.  Unfortunately, I no longer remember how I decided to add doughnuts to the mix, other than that "Dancing and Doughnuts" sounded like a fun title.

 

It is a cool title and I love the premise.  And yes, it is a bit annoying how few people know the difference between dance halls and brothels.

While we are on the subject of the girls, will they appear in later re-tellings?

 

Ahhhhhhhhhhh.  Um, well, probably not.  Not in another book, anyway.  However!  Just like I wrote a short-story tag to "The Man on the Buckskin Horse," I am open to ideas for short stories that add on to the books.

In fact, I have an idea for a prequel to this book, though it hasn't totally gelled.  But it would be a short story, something I'd offer for free somehow.

But the Once Upon a Western series is an anthology series of stand-alone books, so the next book will have all-new characters again.

 

Interesting.  I was hoping that some of the younger girls would be featured in their own story. 
But I can understand why you would do it that way.

 

I will not say it can't happen, because it could.  But I'd need an idea to hit me. 

It lets me explore different regions and eras -- like, Cloaked took place in the 1880s, but Dancing and Doughnuts takes place in the 1860s.

I was very tempted to stick Mr. Palmer from "The Man on the Buckskin Horse" in this somehow, but he never quite fit.

But I could see kind of having cross-overs in some short stories somewhere.

 

*nods* That makes a lot of sense.

Which character was your favorite to write?

 

Shhhhh, don't tell any of my other characters this,

but Jedediah Jones was more fun to write than any other original character I have ever written.  I LOVED writing him.  He basically wrote himself.  I just took dictation.

 

I noticed that one was quite talkative!

My favorite characters to read were the Sheriff, Mr. Kitteridge, Clara and Felicity.

 

Awww!  I absolutely love Sheriff Walbridge and Mr. Kittredge.  I would happily marry either of them.

You know, if they weren't fictional and I wasn't already married.

Um, and if they weren't married/engaged.

You know what I mean.

 

Funny, I was thinking that myself!

Exactly!

 

😀

 

😉

 

Clara and Felicity were superbly fun too.  Clara in particular just tickles me.  She's so snappy! 

 

Aye, that she is! 

If you do wind up writing any short sequels, I hope we see more of Trouble and More Trouble!

They were an absolute hoot!

 

Awwwww, those two.  I love those two!

I honestly meant to give them actual names, originally, and just stuck Trouble and More Trouble in there as placeholders.

And then I realized that nope, those were exactly what they needed to be called.

 

That's amusing.  If I were to learn their real names, I would never call them that!

 

I had to stop them from running away with the whole story a couple of times because they really do have a great energy to them.

 

Yes, they do!

 

They never did confess their real names to me.  And I'm okay with that.

 

I think most of your readers will be too! 

 

They'll have to be! 

 

This next question is one of my favorites to ask in author interviews.  Were any of the characters based on real life people?

 

Actually, yes!

I don't normally base characters on people I know in real life, but I made an exception this time.  My mom belongs to a book club at the church I grew up in, and last year, they invited me to come talk to them about my book Cloaked.

During our discussions, they announced that I needed to put them all in my next book.  I've known most of these ladies since I was 12, and they're like aunts and cousins to me at this point.

 

Ah!  The Quilting Ladies!  The ones who don't gossip!  

 

I kind of laughed about it, but as I was writing this, I got to the part with the sewing circle, and I realized that I could TOTALLY name all those lovely ladies after the Salem Book Bunch.

Precisely.

 

That's sweet! 

 

So that's why they all get first names.  Those are all people I know for real.  And I can't WAIT for them to read this! 

 

I'm sure they'll love it!

 

I hope so!

 

Well, this has been a delightful chat, but I'm afraid I must go now.  Supper calls.

 

And my kids just returned from the pool, so I'd better pop them all into the showers!  

 

But thank you for allowing me to ARC for you and for doing this little interview.

 

Thanks so much for the fun conversation!  You're welcome! 

 

I look forward to reading the rest of this series!  Happy Writing!

 

Thanks!  Have a good night!

 

You too! 

 

 ✯✯✯✯✯✯✯

 

Be sure to look up this story on Amazon and Goodreads and you should check out Rachel's blog, too! 

  

 

 

Quote Queste ~ February 2017 ~ Going to War

  Today I am linking up with Melody Muffin's Quote Queste.  This month's prompt is:

  Then my sister challenged me to take a pin I had pinned, and combining the two, write the QQ scene.  I hadn't been planning to write one.  This is the other pin.

  And now, my readers, here is the final product.

 

  No 16-year-old should ever feel this way.  Ever.  But, that’s what happens when you let your emotions rule.  Love is never an easy thing, but it’s even harder when the one you are in love with, or should I say were in love with - ‘cause I’m sure as blazes not in love with him now - is a poisonous toad.  I think I’ve learned my lesson now.  The handsome, dreamy, Prince Charming types aren’t always real.  He certainly wasn’t.  He had the dreamiest eyes, the most gorgeous looks, but boy did he have a venomous heart!  Like a pretty, shiny snake or beetle that may look perfectly harmless to the inexperienced eye, but is actually the most poisonous kind. 

  I feel like I’ve been to war.  Not that I know what it feels like to be in a war, I’ve never been in one.  Well actually, if you think about it, I guess being in a relationship with him was a bit of a war.  A war between what I knew was right, and what he wanted me to do…all of which I knew was wrong.  If so, then I guess I won this war, because I sent him away, hopefully never to return, but, as with all wars, you can never be certain that that evil will never return.

  I hope you enjoyed it and be sure to check out Melody's blog and try writing your own!  So long!

 

I'm Crazy

  Guys, I am certifiably crazy.  I'm doing NaNo this year.  Yeah.  I know.  Really crazy.  I can hardly ever get past 3 chapters when I try to write a book.  And I have trouble with writing prompts that require 1,000 words.  And no, I'm not saying these things so that you all will tell how not crazy I am.  I'm showing you the kinds of things that I let my older sister Melody talk me into doing.

  Anyway on to the actual story.  I have a slight....okay, more then slight obsession with Vermont farmhouses.  I blame it on Grace Livingston Hill novels and White Christmas.  And I was swooning on and on about how I wanted an Old-Fashioned Christmas in a Vermont farmhouse.  So Melody says, "Well I can't give you an actual Christmas in a Vermont farmhouse, but you can give your imagination one.  Go write a story about it."  So I decided to stick our family (with some adjustments) into a Vermont farmhouse and give them an Old-Fashioned Christmas.  It is currently titled, Christmas In Vermont, very unoriginal, but I haven't thought of a better one.  Half the kids are married, the Triplets (I turned myself into triplets, 2 girls, 1 boy, and based one of the girls off of  my real life twin who is actually 3 years older then me and not related to me by blood), are home from Dublin for Christmas, and another sister is home from Korea for Christmas bringing a guy home with her.  Oh, and it's an Irish family.  So basically, it's just this big family having a wonderful Christmas and sharing the love, joy and faith that the Season always fosters in me.

  It is 11:05 on November 1st, and I wrote 3,753 words throughout the day while canning applesauce.  I am fairly proud of myself.  I am also very tired which is why this is probably the most rambling, ridiculous post I have ever written and I can't believe I am actually going to to hit publish.  But I wanted to post about it and nothing sensible is coming out of my brain right now.

An inspirational pin from my storyboard.

 via Pinterest

Sept/Oct Ravelry Challenge

I am a member of a Forum called, Ravelry.  A group on there that I am a prat of, has bi-monthly writing challenges.  They have three predetermined elements that you must incorporate into a story that is between 1,000 and 10,000 words long.  This months elements were:

  Person: Prisoner
  Place: Planet (other then Earth)
  Thing: Pizza

Those three elements fit perfectly into a story that my siblings and I were doing.

Bertie's Diary



Macatoutou, November 12, 2118 

Dear Diary,
  I swear, some days I could scream!  I just want to bust loose, go somewhere, DO something!  I know that I was looking forward to the adventure of starting a new life on Tasural, but I never expected THIS!!  When we had to crash land on this unknown planet (which we have since named Macatootu) I was kind of excited, but now?  The loneliness and solitude is enough to drive a person insane!  It's not that there aren't people here (there are 25, Captain Dan, Alessandro, Chiara, the 13 Robertsons and we 9 MacKays), but the monotony and sameness (if that is even a word) of everything gets to me.   We see the same people, the same sights, eat the same food.  I feel like a prisoner here.  We have been here for 9 months now.  I just want out!  I want to rise, fly, touch the sky!  I want nice, cheesy, bubbly hot pizza from 'Giovanni's'.  I want to go bowling with my friends at 'Bill's Place'.  I want to hang out with Lizzie and hold her adorable little girls.  I want to travel with Beth and go see our favorite places again.  Go hiking with Kitty on our favorite Mountain.  Run races with Marie in the rain.  Go horseback riding with Emmie and Lynn.  Lie in the backyard and watch shooting stars and laughing over the dumbest things, with Beth, Nate, Chloe and Trevor.  Don't get me wrong, Franz and Gertie are two of the best friends a girl could ever have.  And there are lots of things that we do together and have great enjoyment doing.  Like practicing archery, and having a contest to see whose arrows get farther.  Franz and I swordfighting.  Playing songs together, me on the violin, Gertie on the cello and Franz on the guitar.  But sometimes, you get tired  of seeing the same people, even if they are your best friends.  And I know that Franz and Gertie share these feelings.  They may not say anything, but I can see it in their eyes and sense it in their behavior.  And I don't always feel like this.  Sometimes I feel perfectly fine.  Franz, Gertie and I, have gone exploring together and guess what we found? AN ISLAND WITH REAL LIVE DRAGONS!!!!!!  And you know how much I love Dragons!!  On one of our visits there, we found a baby Dragon with a broken wing and I brought it home with me.  It took a while to convince some people (Eleanor in particular) to let me keep it, but I finally got them to agree.  We have determined that it is a male, so I have named him Fionn mac Uail, after the Irish hero.  And he is so adorable!  He isn't much bigger then my hand, and he will sit on my fingertips and make little rumbling noises (it sounds like a kitten purring).  He is a dark red and Franz likes teasing that he (Fionn), is the same color as my hair.  Franz has become an awful tease lately.  I know that one of his greatest pleasures these days is arousing my temper and he knows how to do it only too well.  He is such a plague!  The children are enjoying it for the most part.

  The 6 older ones (Christopher, Otto, Jordan, Anton, Jennifer and Louisa) are enjoying sneaking off to explore.  Captain Dan loves going after them and bringing them back.  Especially, Jen and Lou.  There is this animosity between them that is real, but then again it isn't.  They don't hate each other, but the girls will make nasty faces at him and sit there making their plans for sneaking off in a most audible whisper and Captain Dan sits there telling them how he will catch them.  He gets a lot of fun out of it.  The other day, he came home hauling a soaking wet girl under each arm.  They were making the nastiest faces I have ever seen at him and he had a very triumphant grin on his face.  Turns out he had caught them jumping off a cliff (he says it wasn't very high) into the water, and then swimming back to the shore for another jump.  You should have heard the lecture that Eleanor and Chiara (as the oldest females they are the pseudo 'mothers') gave them!  Gertie and I had to leave the room because Jen and Lou looked so repentant (not!) and Captain Dan was so triumphant!  Plus I have to admit, jumping off a cliff into the water does sound like fun!  That night, after the children were in bed, Franz, Gertie and I were teasing Captain Dan about sneaking off and doing it ourselves and telling him that he would never be able to catch us!  He just laughed and shook his finger at us and said that the 3 of us were worse then the 12 younger children put together!

  Zia and Erich have been attempting to catch parrots.  A very noisy green kind abound on this island.  Since we have been surrounded by them, I have been assured that Zia and Erich come by their mutual nickname of 'Parrots' honestly!  Neither, the parrots or Zia and Erich ever stop making noise!

  And since we are talking about the children's escapades, I'll tell you what the others have done lately.   A couple of weeks ago, when we got up, it was fairly cold outside.  Jen and Lou (it was their turn, along with Jordan and Anton, to bring water from the spring) hadn't thought that they needed their shoes.  When they discovered that they did, Jordan and Anton very obligingly offered to bring their sisters their shoes.  We should have been warned by their extreme politeness.  A few minutes later, we heard Jen and Lou yelling in unison, "JORDAN! ANTON! I'M GONNA KILL YOU!!"  When we reached them, Jen and Lou were beating up the boys who were laughing so hard they couldn't even defend themselves.  They had put frogs in the girls' shoes.  Oh boy!!!  Well let's just say that I am glad I am not in the boys' shoes!  Not only did they get themselves into major trouble, but Jen and Lou are awful when they retaliate!!  I don't know what they did to the boys (if they even have), but they appear to be pretty satisfied with themselves.

As for Christopher and Otto (or Chrissy Lumby and Gussie, as Gertie and I call them), they attempted to sneak off into the woods in the morning and stay all day and all night.  I don't know how they thought they could get away with that!  They were only gone for about half an hour before Jack and Karl went after them.  They were promptly grounded for a week.
As for the younger four, Glory, Gretl, Luke and Curt, they have been pretty good.  Glory and Gretl keep catching spiders and bringing them into the house to show us their latest find.  We all would prefer that they kept them outside and are working on that with them.  And when we went to do the laundry the other day, we found rocks in Luke and Curt's pants pockets.  That's boys for you!  I am glad that we don't have Legos for them to string all over the house though!

I know that this entry has ended on a more cheerful note then it began.  But that is how I am.  Franz calls it, 'the rubber ball personality'.  Somedays I hate that I am that way and other days I love it.  But I know that the most important thing is to keep trusting in God and believing that He will give me the strength to make it through the rough times.  Well, Dear Diary, that is all for now.  Talk to you later.

Roberta Maisie MacKay