First Frost Blog Tour: Guest Post

Author Liz DeJesus has stopped by today with a guest post for the First Frost Blog Tour!

Hey everyone! Here we are... my very first blog tour! I’m so excited to share my latest book, First Frost with you. I'm going to share a little bit of my book and what helped inspire the writing that came with it.

I remember the day the idea for First Frost hit me. It was like being struck by lightning! I was holding my eldest son, Mason, in my arms. I was giving him a bottle and watching television at the same time. Then a commercial for a local children's museum popped up and I thought it looked like a cool place to visit. I figured it was about time we had some place fun and local for my son to visit. Of course, I didn't stop there. My train of thought just kept on going; I started thinking about themed museums. I thought of how awesome it would be to have a pirate museum, or even a fairy tale themed museum.

And after that it was pretty much over for me. I started wondering a whole series of what ifs.

            What if it's run by a family?

            What if the items in the museum really were magical?

            What if the main character thought all the items were fake?

            What if there was a witch?

            What if she could actually use these items?

The funny thing was that all of these thoughts hit me while I was still holding my son in my arms and I was nowhere near a notebook or pen. So I basically had to repeat the idea to myself over and over again as I fed my baby boy (who was drifting off into a midday nap) and as soon as I was finished feeding him, I put him in his crib and I scrambled towards the closest piece of paper and jotted down the ideas I had.

At first I set out to write the book from Rose's (Bianca's mother) point of view, then I changed my mind and ended up writing the book from Bianca's point of view. I also wondered whether or not I should make it a young adult novel. So in essence, the story went through a lot of changes before I even had a chapter typed up. In all honesty, I'm glad I stuck with Bianca, she is so much fun to write for. She's smart, brave, funny, vulnerable, and she does get her butt kicked a little, which is something I love to see in other people's books, I don't like it when the main character gets by unscathed and unaffected by everything that happened. Otherwise, what's the point of her journey, you know what I mean?

Another thing I had to figure out was what items Rose and Bianca had in the museum. Which ones were on display? Why? And which weren't on display? Why? So I decided to do a little research (if you can call reading fairy tales research, then it was the most fun I ever had) and decided to go with a few well known fairy tales and sprinkle a few of the more obscure ones (I like to make people read...sorry). I did stay true to the original fairy tales (taking a few minor liberties here and there to make the story more interesting) but I didn’t turn Red Riding Hood into the wolf or make Cinderella go crazy cleaning the castle or anything like that.

Once I had the idea in place I had to figure out who my characters were and the setting was important too since the museum is as much a character as the people in the story were. Now, if you’re a writer and you do outlines before you start writing...I envy you. I don’t do outlines, I’ve tried and my characters end up doing whatever they feel like...I’m just going along for the ride. Sometimes I’ll add a little something here and there to make things interesting (or challenging...or just wanna piss them off enough to see what they’ll do) but for the most part, my characters are leading the way.

I kinda like it that way.

Thank you so much for having me here and lettine me rant about my book and writing in general. If you would like to know more about me, my writing and First Frost, please visit my website http://lizdejesus.webs.com/

Official blurb:

For generations, the Frost family has run the Museum of Magical and Rare Artifacts, handing down guardianship from mother to daughter, always keeping their secrets to “family only.”

Gathered within museum’s walls is a collection dedicated to the Grimm fairy tales and to the rare items the family has acquired: Cinderella’s glass slipper, Snow White’s poisoned apple, the evil queen’s magic mirror, Sleeping Beauty’s enchanted spinning wheel…

Seventeen-year-old Bianca Frost wants none of it, dreaming instead of a career in art or photography or…well, anything except working in the family’s museum. She knows the items in the glass display cases are fakes because, of course, magic doesn’t really exist.

She’s about to find out how wrong she is.

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