Synopsis:
Once upon a time, Ruby believed in magic…
When Ruby volunteers to take her mother's housecleaning shift at the gothic Cottingley Heights mansion, she thinks it's going to be business as usual. Clean out the fridge, scrub toilets, nothing too unusual. But nothing could prepare her for the decadent squalor she finds within. Rich people with more money than sense trashing their beautiful clothes and home just because they can. After the handsome Tam discovers her cleaning up after him and his rich friends, Ruby has never felt more like a character from her sister’s book of fairy tales.
Tam sees beyond Ruby’s job and ratty clothes, and sweeps her off her feet, treating her like a real princess, but Ruby is sure this beautiful boy is too good to be true. And as one tragedy after another befalls Ruby and her family, Ruby painfully learns that magic is all too real, and it always comes with a price.
When Ruby volunteers to take her mother's housecleaning shift at the gothic Cottingley Heights mansion, she thinks it's going to be business as usual. Clean out the fridge, scrub toilets, nothing too unusual. But nothing could prepare her for the decadent squalor she finds within. Rich people with more money than sense trashing their beautiful clothes and home just because they can. After the handsome Tam discovers her cleaning up after him and his rich friends, Ruby has never felt more like a character from her sister’s book of fairy tales.
Tam sees beyond Ruby’s job and ratty clothes, and sweeps her off her feet, treating her like a real princess, but Ruby is sure this beautiful boy is too good to be true. And as one tragedy after another befalls Ruby and her family, Ruby painfully learns that magic is all too real, and it always comes with a price.
Kathleen Bolton is a professional writer and editor.
Currently, she is a contracted writer to Working Partners, Ltd. Her projects include Confessions of a First Daughter, a YA series about
the misadventures of the U.S. President’s teen-aged daughter, and Secrets of a
First Daughter, both published by HarperCollins Teen, under the pen name
Cassidy Calloway. Her current project, Slumber, under the pen name Tamara Blake, released
July of 2013 and is a dark suspense fantasy novel for teens. She is the
co-founder of Writer Unboxed, one of the foremost
online communities for writers of fiction.
Kathleen lives with her husband and daughter
in upstate New York.
ABOUT SLUMBER
Once upon a time, Ruby believed in magic…
When Ruby volunteers to take her mother's housecleaning shift
at the gothic Cottingley Heights mansion, she thinks it's going to be business
as usual. Clean out the fridge, scrub toilets, nothing too unusual. But nothing
could prepare her for the decadent squalor she finds within. Rich people with
more money than sense trashing their beautiful clothes and home just because
they can. After the handsome Tam discovers her cleaning up after him and his rich
friends, Ruby has never felt more like a character from her sister’s book of
fairy tales.
Tam sees beyond Ruby’s job and ratty clothes, and sweeps her
off her feet, treating her like a real princess, but Ruby is sure this
beautiful boy is too good to be true. And as one tragedy after another befalls
Ruby and her family, Ruby painfully learns that magic is all too real, and it
always comes with a price.
Guest Post
The Shapeshifter Hero
Thank
you for inviting me to guest with you today. My latest book, SLUMBER, written
in collaboration with the phenomenal editorial team at Working Partners Ltd.,
is a dark twist on fairy tales, and I had a blast taking familiar tropes and
mixing them up. One of those tropes in paranormal fiction is the
shapeshifter character. Mysterious, magical, and downright inhuman at times,
the shapeshifter hero holds a special fascination for me. As a reader, I love
stories where shapeshifters glide on the edge of magic and reality, especially
when stories are in a contemporary setting. As a writer, anything is possible
with a character who can go anywhere, be anything, yet who has to struggle to
adapt when emotions such as love complicates his life. In Slumber, Tam, the hero, is a good example of a
shapeshifter who struggles with a magic nature that longs to love a human.
Tam is literally a shapeshifter, a magic creature in the
guise of a human. For the first half of the novel, he appears to the heroine
Ruby (and the reader) as a rich, glamorous, handsome young man set on sweeping
Ruby off her feet, a prince driving a Mercedes roadster wearing hipster
clothes. He seems to be too good to be true. He is.
Midway through the book he reveals himself to be a
supernatural creature – a fey – immortal, beautiful, and untrustworthy. Ruby is
shocked by his decadent lifestyle. But at the same time she is also attracted
to the luxury and ease he offers her. She (and we) are repelled and fascinated
with life at mysterious Cottingley mansion. Ruby is confused by the fact that
Tam seems to be so into her, when he could have anyone.
Despite his capricious nature, Tam seems to have fallen hard
for Ruby. Ruby’s strong moral compass and steadfast resolve to save her family
both attracts and frustrates him. He cannot understand why Ruby wouldn’t
abandon her loved ones to come and live the carefree, luxurious life at
Cottingley – after all, he’s never had that problem persuading other human
girls who came before her. In true shapeshifter fashion, Tam tries all his
tricks to tempt Ruby into succumbing to his charms. But Ruby’s no pushover –
and Tam is baffled by her resistance. Little by little, it is Tam who is
changed by Ruby, setting them both on a collision course with disaster.
As a writer, it was fun to plumb the depths of Tam’s
internal conflict, and infuse his actions with different implications,
depending upon which lens we are viewing him. Was Tam being helpful to Ruby? Or
a trickster? Who is he really tricking? Ruby – or himself?
Shapeshifter heroes offer writers limitless possibilities,
which is why the paranormal genre is going full steam ahead. Vampires,
werewolves, fey, androids or other types of shapeshifter characters devised by
creative writers have kept the genre exciting and evolving. Shapeshifter
fiction shows no signs of slowing down, which is fantastic news for readers and
writers of these types of stories.
Kathleen
Bolton is a professional writer and editor.
Currently, she is a contracted writer to Working Partners, Ltd. Her current project, Slumber, under the pen name Tamara Blake, is a dark suspense
fantasy novel for teens. Her projects also include Confessions of a First Daughter, a YA series about the misadventures of the U.S.
President’s teen-aged daughter, and Secrets of a
First Daughter, both published by
HarperCollins Teen, under the pen name Cassidy Calloway. She is the co-founder
of Writer Unboxed, one
of the foremost online communities for writers of fiction.
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