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Same story, different story

  Book-a-day until I publish July 15.

 

I love the Oz books.  Love, love, love them. I was devoted to them as a child. Collected several different sets, some time before that became fashionable. My favorites were the white ones with the gorgeous art nouveau drawings and the great index in the back with a catalogue of all the different original L. Frank Baum volumes.

The Oz books are wonderful and weird and wacky and so very different from the movie.  Or should I say movies?  No, let’s start with movie. The 1939 classic.

Greatest year of moviemaking, many say.  The Wizard of Oz. Gone with the Wind,  Dark Victory. Wuthering Heights. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Of Mice and Men.  So very many other great movies.

And the Wizard of Oz movie is also wonderful and weird and wacky. Just in a different way from the books.

Oz has been adapted so many ways.  The sequel books after Baum died, from many different authors. The movies. There have been quite a few.

Gregory Maguire’s wonderful Wicked, which tells the original Oz story from a very different point of view—that of the Wicked Witch of the West.  Or was she wicked? Maguire wrote a whole series of his alternate history of Oz.

And then Oz was visited again, the same story being told in yet another way. Wicked became a Broadway musical.  Not even the first Oz musical. That would be The Wiz. And Wicked the musical is also wonderful and weird and wacky in its very own way, which is different from the Maguire book, which is different from the Baum books.

The Baum books are now public domain, and all sorts of new books are being written that put their own spin on the Oz story. I’ve read a few.  Liked some a lot, some less than others.

 

Oz is one of those magic lands that just seems so real. It seems so real that we should be able to reach through the page and find ourselves there.

In my book, The Lost Princess of Story, Lilla loves books more than just about anything in her life. She is convinced she can hear her books calling, that the worlds of magic in the books are real and she can get there somehow.

Lilla does not know it, but she is right.

Oz still holds great magic, all these years later.

When was the last time you read one of the original books? You might be surprised what you find in the pages.

Give some of the newer retelling a try as well.  I am very fond of the Maguire, both the books and the musical.

 

Your Fairy Bookmother,

Suzanne

 

 

 

 

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Ten days left…the countdown begins!

   Ten days to go!

 

Only ten days left until The Lost Princess of Story is available on Amazon.

Time is going so fast!

My thought today…

I need to pace myself.  This is a marathon, not a sprint.  Once the book comes out, I’ll have a month of book blog tour and promotions.

I’ve been going like crazy with the marketing. Book Two will probably be much easier. By then I have a feeling I’ll have a better grasp of what to do and not to do when launching a book. But it’s all still new to me.

I have been charmed and so grateful by how many writers have reached out to me and helped me along the way, in writers’ groups on Reddit and Quora and Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. So many helpful, gracious, lovely people who have shared information and help.

Soon the world will meet Lilla and Charlie and Sophie and Jamie and Bob and Luke and all the other characters. Soon the Doors will open and the world can discover the World of Story.

I can’t wait.  And I’m so anxious.

Your Fairy Bookmother,

Suzanne

 

 

 

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Transcendental Children’s Books?

   Book-a-day until I publish July 15.

 

The Hall Family Chronicles are a wonderful mix of magic and the real world.
It was a toss-up for me, should I pick The Swing in the Summerhouse, or The Astonishing Stereoscope?

    But I finally picked the former…

 

Because I always wanted a summerhouse.  I always wanted a stereoscope, too, but there is a deep yearning in me for a Victorian house with a summerhouse and outbuildings.  Like the one on the cover of the first book in the series.

 

    My dream house.

 

Of course, I live in NYC. Urban Brooklyn. No painted ladies in our neighborhood. There are some way the way out in Brooklyn, but not in “the Hills”, as The Lost Princess of Story calls our neighborhood, that Cobble Hill/Boerum Hill universe.  I am blessed to live in a tiny house, painted white, older than the Brooklyn Bridge. But no summerhouse.

I discovered recently that the house in the Hall Family books is real. Walden Street in Concord, MA.

What an appropriate address. (If you have read the books, you will understand. If not, definitely go check them out.)

I love that the house exists.  It is going on my list of literary tourism trips that I look forward to after lockdown is really over. (I know it is over for many, but even though I am vaxxed, my health has me being really cautious. I had a bad case of COVID and still have long haul symptoms.)

I love that the Hall’s house is real. I love that there is a series of kids books that explore Transcendentalism. I love the blend of the everyday and mundane with the magical, the exciting, and the dark that happens in the pages of these books.

I also love the swing that ticks down time.  Magical and a little eerie.

Give it a try. I think you will like it.

And don’t forget, my own book of magic, The Lost Princess of Story, is available on Amazon July 15.

Your Fairy Bookmother,

Suzanne