How to Write a Fairy Tale in 3 Steps

Step 1: Invent a character
This character needs to be pathetic on the outside, and relatively perfect on the inside. Honest, kind, and dirt poor.Also gorgeous.

Step 2: Put said character where she can demonstrate how obnoxiously selfless she is.
It helps if she's really hungry, dirty, or extra-poor at the time.

Step 3: Reward her for acting in a way you would never act yourself.
Then pretend like you actually would act that way and give yourself a pat on the back.

The Fairy Tale Trap - Book Trailer

Things I Never Said Before I Was a Mom

A few quick notes: The book cover design contest ends this weekend. I have some fantastic entries, but would always like to see more. Just so you know, the winning entry WILL be the official cover of THE FAIRY TALE TRAP ebook which comes out December 20th!

Also, I'm working on some bonus material for the ebook. What would you like to see? (I've come up with some ideas for the poll in the sidebar, but if you want to see something else, please leave it in the comments!)

That said...

I've started a new blog, called Things I Never Said Before I Was a Mom. I think it's pretty self-explanatory, but the website address is based on something my mom said to me when I was two: "Stop standing on the bread."

http://stopstandingonthebread.blogspot.com/

Anyway, I thought I'd share the first few posts with my readers on this blog, in case you want a quick laugh.

"We don't rub our tushy with necklaces!"

"Get your foot out of the Crock Pot."

"Get the bath toys out of the toilet!"

Fun with Word Clouds

Writers like words. At least, I hope we all do. So, just for fun, I plugged my work in progress (Ivy's novel Roses and Mirrors) into Wordle. It generated this word cloud:

It's not as cool as I thought it would be, but I'm very pleased that 'Beast' and 'Beauty' are prominent. I really need to go back and look at how many times I use the word 'like', though.

I'd much rather it come out like this:

What clouds can you come up with?

Update: my friend Ryan made his own word clouds and posted them on his website here.