Book Stories: Fairly Human

I grew up in Tolkien's Middle Earth and riding on Heinlein's spaceship Dora with Lazarus Long.  I rode Anne McCaffrey's dragons and picked up a sword in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover stories.  I found out I had powers with Zenna Henderson's The People.

Maybe that's why I thought I'd write fantasy when I started writing.

I tried my hand at a lot of types of writing.  From literary fiction to poetry.  I made $4 on a poem and decided maybe my calling was something else.

Then I discovered the romance genre.  Two people, overcoming odds and finding a happily-ever-after.  This, my heart whispered.  This was what I wanted to write.

And I did.  I discovered I adored writing these relationship focused stories.  And then I realized that I could still write fantasy.

Mad About Max

 Heinlein had a theory that well loved universes exist in some dimension.  What if a bestselling fairy godmother romance author wasn't having any luck at romance?  What if her fictional fairies became real?

Magic for Joy

These were early stories, written with more glee than know-how.  But they struck a note with readers.  I have a collection of fairies they sent me over the years.  I wrote the first three books about the fairies and the Aaronson family and thought I was done with fairies.

Miracles for Nick

But readers kept asking for more.  So I wrote three novellas in which all the fairies get their own happily-ever-after.  The publisher asked me to turn them into a book...and so I blended those three shorter stories into one book.

Fairly Human

One of the things I loved about fairies was in my own way it was an homage to Heinlein.  But one of the other things that gave me glee was the opening scene in Fairly Human when the three old lady fairies find themselves sentenced to losing their magic.  And without their magic, they reverted to their true forms...beautiful young women.  Yes, since fairies are immortal, why were they old ladies?  Because all the heroes kept falling in love with them.  So they started wearing old lady bodies.  They did it for so long, that's how they saw themselves.

But looks can be deceiving and love can be tricky...with or without magic.

I was thrilled when a while back the publisher told me the fairies were getting new covers and being rereleased!  I adored the new artwork and I love that readers are re-meeting Fern, Myrtle and Blossom!  The fourth book, Fairly Human, is on sale for $.99 this week.   I hope you'll check the fairies out!  They might be older books, but they hold a special place in my heart!

Holly

On Writing: Partners

I'm heading to Philadelphia next weekend to do a workshop for the Valley Forge RWA.  It has me thinking about writing this week.

What does a writer want you to feel when you read their book?  What do they want you to take away from a story?  What was their point of telling that story?

If you've ever sat through an English Lit class, you've been asked questions like this.  And those questions have validity.  The author always had a point in telling the story.  Sometimes it's blatant and as a reader you know their take away. Good triumphs over evil.  Love wins out.  But sometimes their point is more obscure.  Maybe Love Wins Out is the point. But maybe there's something smaller and less tangible to the reader...something that drove the author to tell that story. 

When I wrote Briar Hill Road, Love Wins Out is easily my big theme...it's the theme that truly works for any book I've written.  But Briar Hill Road was also an exploration of what makes a family (most of my books are that, too).  Yet even more than that, for me as the writer, it was a cathartic book.  It was my way of saying goodbye to my mother-in-law.  

Here's the thing...you don't need to know that to read the book.  When I finish a book, when I've said what I wanted to say in it, I let it go.  My ownership of that story is done.  I hand it over to you...the reader.  And maybe you'll see the same thing in it that I saw as I wrote it.  Maybe you'll see that love always wins out.  Maybe you'll recognize that family isn't always born...sometimes it's discovered.  Maybe you'll realize, if only for a moment, that life is a journey and there are ups and downs.  Maybe you'll even see shades of my mother-in-law in Kathleen and think, I would have loved to be this character's friend.  (Trust me, you would have.)

Writing and reading...they are a codependent partnership.  I tell a story and then I set it free.  You get to pick it up and (hopefully) when you read it, you bring your own point-of-view, your own history to the story and you see it through a different lens than I wrote it.  You see it through your own personal lens.  Maybe you take away something I never imagined from it. And that's okay.  That's my hope.  That is my intent.  

Writer and reader are partners.  You and me...we're a team!

Holly

PS It's a sales palooza week.  (Publishers just send me notices...I have no control most of the time and just like to pass them on.)

Hold Her Heart
Just One Thing
Everything But...series
Fairly Human

Ask the Author #3, Why fairies?

Once upon a time there was a girl who read a lot of science fiction and fantasy books.  I mean a lot.  A whole lot.  She grew up in Middle Earth, Narnia, Oz and a bunch of other magical worlds.  One day, she finally decided what she wanted to do when she grew up. She wanted to be a writer.  But rather than writing science fiction or fantasy, she wrote romance.  Why?  Because she fell in love with...love.

A few years after she started the greatest job in the history of jobs, (I mean, she got to go to work on her couch and wear holey jeans...and spend her day making up stories) she got an idea for fairies.  I mean, poof.  They were just there one day...like magic.  And it turned out Myrtle, Fern and Blossom were fun...and a bit inept.  But they had good hearts!  The books were published and Holly went on to write a bunch more romantic comedies, and then some romance + stories (women's fiction/romances).  But the fairies weren't done.  A new publisher picked them up and gave them new (much prettier) covers and put them back in the world!

So come visit Erie, PA (I always say it's the best city ever and it has almost everything...even fairies now) and Myrtle, Fern and Blossom in...Mad About Max, Magic for Joy, Miracles for Nick and Fairly Human!

Holly

Recently, a number of you have asked about my fairy books. First off, thanks for remembering them, or discovering them! I wrote them for ImaJinn Books, and they've since gone into an e-version at Fictionwise.

Let's see, I've brought royalty to Erie, PA in my Perry Square Royal Invasion trilogy, so why not fairy godmothers? LOL You've probably figured out by now that I think Erie's got it all! LOL

You can read an excerpt from each of the books at both Fictionwise, and ImaJinn. You can also find out more about the books on my website. Mad About Max, Magic For Joy, Miracles for Nick, Fairly Human .

Oh, and yes, Janice asked, this was before I started using the pen name, Holly Jacobs. If you'll note the H and R in Fuhrmann, plus that double N at the end...well, let's just say I did a signing once where they put no vowels in my last name. I decided it might be better to try something else! LOL ~Holly