Hi! We’re more than halfway through August. I’m sure a lot of people’s books have been cut from the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off by now, but that’s not what matters here. Once an entry, always an entry!
Today we have Carol Carman’s whose first prize for writing came from a short story publication in a paper … And her SPFBO 9 entry is …
Twicetime
Building a bodyguard to kill your aristocratic niece’s vengeful ex-husband should be easy for a witch.
All you need is the right body and the right magic, and soon you have a mindless killer to do your bidding.
Of course, it all depends on what the butler brings back from the cemetery.
For Frances Stein, reanimating the dead is one thing; convincing the corpse there’s life after death is another. Finding out he’s neither mindless nor killer is something else entirely.
Especially when he’s her last hope, because they both have a limited lifespan, and time is literally running out…
Note: no lambs or werewolves were harmed during the making of this book.
Hmm, it doesn’t quite work out … maybe in a good way?
Onto the Questions!
As a Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off (SPFBO) Entrant, you’re not just independently published, but self-published. Can you start by explaining a bit about why you chose that route and how it’s been for you?
When I was trying traditional publishing, it got to the stage where I felt my life was slipping away waiting for people to get back to me. Plus, I’d previously helped a friend to publish his books so, having cut my publishing teeth on someone else, I thought why not do it for myself? In 2018 I did that with my first book, Gingerbread Children and in 2022 with Twicetime.
The benefit, I’ve found, is that in terms of the paperback version of the books I have complete control over how the book looks and feels in the hand, how visually appealing the layout and choice of fonts are, etc.
The exception to that, of course, is e-publishing platforms like Kindle which have a pre-defined set of fonts which rather takes away from the charm of the book. For example, this is one of the sections from Gingerbread Children which shows an extract from one of the books within my created world, dealing with the ‘matching’ of a witch and a familiar:
By formatting it as shown in the picture, I wanted to give the reader the feeling that this is an ancient and venerable text, which I think it does in the paperback but unfortunately, not in the e-book version because all that formatting is lost. It’s a shame, but there’s nothing I can do about it.
Ooh! I love this! I enjoy formatting my books to be just right, too! It’s a shame how much gets lost in the e-books!
On a related note, why did you enter the SPFBO contest? How do you expect to find it? Refreshing your blog’s page every five minutes, or sit back and chill?
I entered SPFBO last year with my first book Gingerbread Children but for various reasons I wasn’t as active in the competition community as I could have been, so this year I’ve been connecting much more with other authors, reviewers and bloggers (thanks everybody!). It’s been a much more rewarding experience because everyone in the SPFBO community is so supportive.
That is awesome!
Book titles. Why did you choose the title Twicetime?
Because Twicetime uses elements of Frankenstein, it was originally called Francesca Stein after one of the characters in it then. But in one of my many revisions prior to publishing I had a change of heart as well as a change of character names, and I chose the title Twicetime because the thing it describes is intrinsic to the story. Let’s just say that everybody needs Time to live, but some people need Twicetime.
Hmm. I wonder who it is …
I won’t ask for your favourite scene since I know some people don’t have those (like me; I never have favourites), but can you share a (non-spoiler) scene you really like and you just can’t believe how awesome it is every time you go back to re-read it?
In Twicetime (as in Gingerbread Children) there are sections called ‘Notes on’ which I use both for world-building and as a lead-in to whatever action follows. One of my favourite ‘Notes on’ from Twicetime is this one, ‘Notes on Colour’:
In the above passage the reader gets a bit of world-building (the attitude of the people towards skin colour and money), and they’re prepared for the next part of the book to reveal what it is that’s ‘something very unexpected’, which they know that it’ll involve someone’s skin, and possibly someone’s death.
I like these kinds of sections! 😀
What are some elements or themes, or combinations thereof, that really make your book stand out to you?
I’m afraid that I don’t think of elements and themes when I write; I just write the story and ensure that it’s as satisfying and consistent and entertaining as it can be. I tend to leave it to the reader to discover what they get from it. Those who want to analyse it can do so (and I’d be very interested in their analysis!) and those who simply want a good read can have one. Having said that, in Twicetime there is a sense of strangers becoming friends and friends becoming family, so I suppose there’s a theme of ‘found family’ running through it – purely accidentally, of course.
Pure accidentally is still there, right? 😀
Why did you write this particular book? What was your inspiration?
On the first writing course I ever did, the tutor advised us to look at well-known stories from the point of view of a lesser character within those stories, and that simple piece of advice was the key to unlocking a whole new world for me. I discovered that I loved thinking about fairy tales and other well-known stories from a different angle and I’ve had so much joy in creating my own stories from some element of an established work.
Oh, that’s so neat!
The initial idea for Twicetime sprang from the questions: What if Frankenstein had been a woman? and Why would she need to build a monster? And the answer to the second question was To protect herself from another monster…
In the beginning it wasn’t going to be a novel but a potential radio comedy series but the speculative first episode script was rejected by the BBC. At that point there was only the scientist, her husband and his two friends in the script but I found the dynamics between those characters so interesting that I wanted to write the whole story and that’s how it became a much more involved, fully fleshed-out novel.
My first novel, Gingerbread Children was partly a mystery and partly a look at Hansel and Gretel from the witch’s point of view. Were those children the little angels they were made out to be? I think not. Here is a woman who has magical powers and could summon up a feast for herself every day if she wanted – and she even lives in an edible house, for heaven’s sake – so why would she want to eat children? It makes no sense at all. I felt she was the victim of some very bad PR by the people who just wanted rid of her and so I had to set the record straight.
My next book is going to be a different slant on Sleeping Beauty. I’d love to tell you more, but I haven’t finished writing it yet.
I resonate with that! You have to finish before you know too much!
Thank you for sharing that with us!
I’m a former many things: shop assistant, computer programmer, systems analyst, house doer-upper and
BBC journalist, radio presenter and sound effects producer. My first prize for writing came from a short
story competition in my then local paper which, with perfect comic timing, closed down the week before my story was due to be published.
I’ve twice been shortlisted in BBC playwriting competitions, dabbled in stand-up comedy and have an alter-ego in the poet and ultra-sporadic blogger Fifi Fanshawe (website: www.fififanshawe.co.uk).
My short stories and poems were regularly published on the website The Reaper until its demise, and readers have likened my comedy fantasy novels, Gingerbread Children and Twicetime, to the work of Terry Pratchett (so I’m over the moon about that!). I’m now writing a book of short stories and another novel, and collaborating with a cartoonist on a further novel.
You can find Carol on Twitter and her Website.
You can check out her SPFBO 9 novel, Twicetime, on Goodreads or get it on Kobo, her Website, and Amazon. UK link here.
Gingerbread Children
F
amily secrets.
An ancient curse.
Confectionery.
Not quite what Dominica Tort is expecting when her friend dies. But then her friend was the most powerful witch in the country: the Matriarch of the University of Nature, where witches have been trained for longer than history can remember.
A new Matriarch must be inaugurated, but who will it be? Nothing is certain until the envelope’s opened – and not even then. Especially when one candidate disappears and suspicion falls on another.
And what’s the shortbread cottage all about?
As Vice-Matriarch, Dominica must save not only people’s lives, but the future of witchcraft itself.
Warning: contains gingerbread.
Gingerbread Children can likewise be found on Amazon, both US and UK, Kobo, Carol’s Website, and Goodreads.
Enthralled By Love 