{"id":1635,"date":"2018-02-13T13:42:11","date_gmt":"2018-02-13T20:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/?p=1635"},"modified":"2018-02-13T13:43:39","modified_gmt":"2018-02-13T20:43:39","slug":"enchanted-and-the-prestige","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/enchanted-and-the-prestige\/","title":{"rendered":"Enchanted and The Prestige"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A couple years ago I was watching The Prestige:<\/p>\n<p><code><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ijXruSzfGEc\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/code><\/p>\n<p>As you&#8217;ll notice if you watch that trailer one of the ideas behind the movie is that every magic trick has three parts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Pledge &#8212; &#8220;The magician shows you something ordinary. But, of course, it probably isn&#8217;t.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>The Turn &#8212; &#8220;The magician makes this ordinary something do something extraordinary.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>The Prestige &#8212; &#8220;This is the part with the twists and turns. Where lives hang in the balance and you see something shocking that you&#8217;ve never seen before.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Not only did I really enjoy the movie, I loved this idea of the Pledge, the Turn and the Prestige. So much so that I really wanted to write a trilogy of books with those titles. Unfortunately there were two really big problems with that.<\/p>\n<p>First, I Googled and asked around (I&#8217;m lucky enough to be acquainted with a talented amateur magician) and as it turns out the movie made those terms up. That meant I wouldn&#8217;t feel comfortable using them as titles in the same way I would if they were actual magician-y vernacular.<\/p>\n<p>Second, turns out there are only twenty-four hours in a day so I really didn&#8217;t have time to write anything &#8216;magical&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>Luckily for me I have skills other than writing and I know a lot of talented writers.<\/p>\n<p>So I approached some of them and asked each of them to write me three inter-connected romance novellas. The only rules were:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>They had to be connected to one another<\/li>\n<li>They had to be novella-length<\/li>\n<li>They had to be romance<\/li>\n<li>They had to involve magic in some way<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>In the end three awesome paranormal writers joined in &#8212; Sara Dobie Bauer, Em Shotwell and Wendy Sparrow.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s been a bit of a rollercoaster ride to get to this point but I can&#8217;t imagine better people to have taken this journey with and I&#8217;m super excited about our final product &#8212; the Enchanted series. Three books &#8212;<em><a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/2Gb7iKO\"> Magic Spark<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/2HdSXys\">Magic Ember<\/a><\/em> and <a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/2Gd2X9N\"><em>Magic Flame<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But, funny thing&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-1636\" src=\"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/7VTALkqjG40vby3uVIsp03d7yXy-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/7VTALkqjG40vby3uVIsp03d7yXy-200x300.jpg 200w, http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/7VTALkqjG40vby3uVIsp03d7yXy-768x1152.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/7VTALkqjG40vby3uVIsp03d7yXy-683x1024.jpg 683w, http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/7VTALkqjG40vby3uVIsp03d7yXy.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/>You know<a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.ca\/entry\/rupert-grint-harry-potter-essay-moonwalkers_us_56992828e4b0778f46f91bbe\"> that story about how the director of &#8220;Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban&#8221; asked Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint to write an essay about their characters and the results showed amusing parallels between the actors and their characters<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p>Well, about that&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not in any way suggesting parallels between the authors and their characters&#8230; but I do think that their <em>approaches<\/em> to this collection are funny and indicative of something \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>Wendy Sparrow sent me three paranormal romance stories that followed all the rules to the letter. They were connected (each includes a different pair of demigods who need to hook up in order to not die, and characters from one story frequently make appearances in the other stories). They were novella-length (in fact, I think they were each exactly the same number of chapters O_o). They were very obviously romance, and they all involved magic in the form of demigod characters with innate magical powers.<\/p>\n<p>Sara Dobie Bauer bent the rule about sending me three novella-length stories by sending me three novella-length portions of a larger serialized story. But each novella-length portion had an arc and the overall story was amazeballs so how could I say no? Besides, she nailed the other rules &#8212; being three separate parts of one whole the stories couldn&#8217;t possibly be any more connected, the story was 100% a romance and there was loads of magic. We&#8217;re talking about magical destiny, artifacts, a war (complete with a spell battle in the streets!). I mean&#8230; So, yeah, I was totally good with bending that rule \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n<p>Em Shotwell&#8230; oh, Em. Em nailed three of the rules. Her stories were all connected &#8212; each one focused on a different one of the three Murphey sisters. They were all novella-length, and they all involved magic (in this case the sisters were cursed witches whose spell-casting skills aren&#8217;t awesome). But throughout the editing process Em and I had a couple conversations which began, &#8220;Um&#8230; you know this is a <em>romance<\/em>, right?&#8221; Some of her characters are downright unlikable, some of their choices made me grit my teeth and I may have even sent her an email or two that said, &#8220;Dude, you can&#8217;t do that in a romance.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But actually she did. And it worked. So what do I know?<\/p>\n<p>\u00af\\_(\u30c4)_\/\u00af<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/2HbAgLZ\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1638\" src=\"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/D1RQL6oI8pS._SL250_FMpng_.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"203\" \/><br \/>\nGet the series now!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple years ago I was watching The Prestige: As you&#8217;ll notice if you watch that trailer one of the ideas behind the movie is that every magic trick has three parts: The Pledge &#8212; &#8220;The magician shows you something &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/enchanted-and-the-prestige\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[276],"tags":[199,306,288,305,280,209,187],"class_list":["post-1635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enchanted","tag-em-shotwell","tag-enchanted","tag-magic-ember","tag-magic-flame","tag-magic-spark","tag-sara-dobie-bauer","tag-wendy-sparrow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1635"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1640,"href":"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1635\/revisions\/1640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}