Show Notes:
Over the next 2 weeks you will hear about starting to write in middle school, plotting your story with your family (even if you stray from the outline), researching and querying, fighting for what you want in your story, building a community for authors and all the resources they need, making sure your story stays unique to your own ideas, and being sensitive to other people when you’re writing your story.
J.L. Casten’s Website – J.L. Casten’s Instagram – J.L. Casten’s Facebook Page – J.L. Casten’s TikTok – J.L. Casten’s Twitter
JL Casten was an Army brat, who then married a soldier, only to become one herself. She has lived a nomadic existence and attended 7 schools before she was 10. She loves the rich and nuanced world she was exposed to traveling and living around the globe. She is now a disabled Army Veteran who loves to write stories and release them for the world to escape into. She is a married mother of 4 and lives in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
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Transcript:
Speaker A: Welcome to Freya’s Fairy Tales, where we believe fairy tales are both stories we enjoyed as children and something that we can achieve ourselves.
Speaker A: Each week, we will talk to authors about their favorite fairy tales when they were kids and their adventure to holding their very own fairy tale in their hands.
Speaker A: At the end of each episode, we will finish off with the fairy tale or short story read as close to the original authors version as possible.
Speaker A: I am your host.
Speaker A: Freya victoria I’m an audiobook narrator that loves reading fairy tales, novels and bringing stories to life through narration.
Speaker A: I’m also fascinated by talking to authors and learning about their why and how for creating their stories.
Speaker A: We have included all of the links for today’s author and our show in the show notes, today is part one of two where we are talking to J.
Speaker A: L.
Speaker A: Caston about her novels.
Speaker A: Over the next two weeks, you will hear about starting to write in middle school.
Speaker A: Plotting your story with your family, even if you stray from the outline.
Speaker A: Researching and querying.
Speaker A: Fighting for what you want in your story.
Speaker A: Building a community for authors and all the resources they need.
Speaker A: Making sure your story stays unique to your own ideas, and being sensitive to other people when you’re writing your story.
Speaker A: An amulet of stars and fire, an ancient order, a hidden enemy, a dormant magic awakens.
Speaker A: An annual family trip to Scotland becomes a catalyst that shatters everything Laura thought she knew and sets her life plan ablaze.
Speaker A: Magic ran through her veins and she was born to lead.
Speaker A: Not that anyone bothered to tell her that the power within her should be enough to deter any threat, if only she knew how to use it.
Speaker A: Her family hid the truth in hopes of keeping her and her brother safe, knowing some would do anything to control them.
Speaker A: Instead, they may have made them sitting targets.
Speaker A: How much longer can they be kept a secret?
Speaker A: Can they learn to wield the power they were born with before the truth is revealed?
Speaker B: So this show or my podcast is Freya’s Fairy Tales, and that is fairy tales in two ways.
Speaker B: Fairy tales are something that we either read or listened to or watched movies of as kids.
Speaker B: And also the journey for you to spend weeks, months, years writing your book, to finally get to hold that in your hands, is also a fairy tale for you.
Speaker B: So I like to start off with, is there a favorite fairy tale or short story that you liked as a kid and did that favorite change as you got older?
Speaker C: So I was a Disney kid as most people born in the 80s were, right?
Speaker C: I think Sleeping Beauty was my go to for a good number of years.
Speaker C: And then I think once I got older, I transitioned to more adult themes, I guess you could say Greek mythology, Arthurian legend, that kind of thing.
Speaker B: And is there any particular of the older stories that you’d really focused on or just kind of all of them in general?
Speaker C: I went through a period where I was absolutely obsessed with Egyptian and Greek mythology in middle school, I think it was.
Speaker C: I have to kind of figure out what age I was by where I was living, and I was in Germany then, so I’m pretty sure it was middle school started middle school, and we had a unit on Egyptian mythology, and I don’t know if they still do it in school, but we actually like, mummified a chicken.
Speaker B: Wow.
Speaker C: Yeah, like, it was like, you put you dry it out, you put salt all over it, you wrap it, and it stays for 90 days, and then we got to see the mummification process.
Speaker C: It was really, really cool.
Speaker B: That’s got to be a Germany thing, because I don’t think that happens over here.
Speaker C: Yeah, well, I was in Department of Defense schools, so I was an army brat.
Speaker C: And I’m sorry if I offend anyone with that term.
Speaker C: That’s a term that everybody uses my entire life.
Speaker B: My mom always said she was a Navy brat.
Speaker C: Yeah, it’s very common language for those of us who grew up in the military families, but I know that it has come under some scrutiny lately, but for me, that’s how I identify as being an army brat.
Speaker C: So, yeah, DoD schools, we did a lot of things that I don’t think normal schools.
Speaker C: Yeah, but no, that was a lot of fun, and it really made me just fall in love with all things ancient Egypt for many years, and then that kind of funneled its way into Greek mythology as I got into high school, and we start reading The Odyssey and all of those things.
Speaker C: And then right as I was leaving high school, I started to really focus on specifically the Myths of Avalon, which is a series of books that I am still to this day, obsessed with and absolutely love.
Speaker C: And it’s very focused on the women of Arthurian legends, and it’s just a retelling of their power and their leadership and the role that they played in these myths, and I absolutely fell in love with it.
Speaker C: And then I wrote my own Arthurian retelling.
Speaker B: Let’s get into that.
Speaker B: At what age did you think, hey, I might want to be a writer, or did you start writing?
Speaker B: Or when did that kind of start?
Speaker C: So I have a core memory of being, I don’t know, six or seven years old.
Speaker C: I was living in Kentucky at the time, so I had to be elementary school, and I had one of those.
Speaker C: Do you remember?
Speaker C: I don’t know how old you are, but we have these plastic Fisher Price, like, picnic table things that every child had.
Speaker C: I had one, and I distinctly have this memory of sitting down and making, like, a picture book when I was probably six or seven years old and making my mom read it.
Speaker C: And I don’t know what happened to it, but we moved around a lot, so I’m sure it got lost in some moves.
Speaker B: My childhood book was about our guinea pigs and my mom preserved it and I now own it.
Speaker C: I love that we didn’t say much.
Speaker C: Every move was a new way to purge everything we owned, right?
Speaker C: Not a lot carried with me, but I didn’t really write a lot until middle school.
Speaker C: A lot of sappy, angsty, teenage love poem stuff that I would write.
Speaker C: Ridiculously mortified if anyone read now and then again.
Speaker C: After high school, I tried to sit down and write and I struggled a lot with like, what do I want to say?
Speaker C: What’s the story that I want to tell?
Speaker C: Where do I start?
Speaker C: How do I start?
Speaker C: And it kind of got pushed on the back burner for a long time.
Speaker C: I joined the army myself.
Speaker C: Life happened.
Speaker C: I had children.
Speaker C: I am disabled now from the military and was in a really, really, really dark place and thought to myself, what am I going to do with myself now?
Speaker C: I went from being super active and a medic and being in the thick of everything all the time and go to now being someone who has to think about what’s the weather like, what’s the conditions like, how can I control my environment so that I can participate.
Speaker C: And writing really pulled me out of that.
Speaker C: I sat down one day.
Speaker C: I was just like at the bottom of the barrel and didn’t know how to pull myself out and just sat down and I was like, we just watched a Doctor Who marathon, me and my children, OK.
Speaker C: And I was like, it would be really fun to write a time travel series.
Speaker C: And my kids were like, oh, that would be cool.
Speaker C: How would you write it?
Speaker C: And we sat down at dining room table and came up with like, all of these ideas and plot points and all of these things.
Speaker C: And I sat down to write it and it looks nothing at all like what we came up with.
Speaker C: But that was the jumping point.
Speaker C: The jumping point was I watched Dr.
Speaker C: Who and like, let me write a time travel thing and now it’s an Arthurian portal fantasy.
Speaker B: You’re actually my second portal fantasy interview.
Speaker C: It seems to be a bit of a trend coming back.
Speaker C: I’ve seen quite a few authors who are doing portal things or time travel things and I’m with both.
Speaker C: Like, mine is an Arthurian retelling portal time traveling fantasy.
Speaker C: And I’ve seen a lot of this, like, similar themes.
Speaker C: And I’m going, are we all connected in the dream world?
Speaker C: Somehow?
Speaker C: We’re all getting these same messages, like, why is everyone writing similar things?
Speaker C: Look at Hades and Persephone.
Speaker C: How many Hades and Persephone books do we have right now?
Speaker C: I mean, there’s so many, I can’t even count them, and every single one of them has, like, cult like, followings.
Speaker C: Every single one is unique and define its own.
Speaker C: I definitely think that literature tends to kind of run in trends.
Speaker B: It does.
Speaker B: And you’ll see, every ten to 20 years, they all come back around.
Speaker B: Same with the COVID styles.
Speaker B: And everything always comes back around.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: Now it may be more updated because, like, an 80s font style cover, it’s going to be different from a today’s font style cover, but it all comes back around.
Speaker B: So you guys are sitting at your kitchen table plotting out this book, and then how long did it take you to actually take from the outline to completing the first draft?
Speaker C: So that took three years, but I don’t think I wrote at all for about a year and a half.
Speaker C: I hit a point where there was a lot of personal stuff going on, and I just kind of pushed it aside.
Speaker C: I’ll come back to it later.
Speaker C: It moved again because apparently it’s hard for me to stay in one place.
Speaker C: So we moved again, and then when the pandemic hit, I was like, you know, things have slowed down.
Speaker C: I have time.
Speaker C: I can sit down again and try to write this, because I had written, like, 17 chapters in a week.
Speaker C: It just was so fast.
Speaker C: And then it inevitably slowed down.
Speaker C: I think maybe if I were more organized, it might help things as far as knowing where things are going.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker C: But I wrote book two with a rough outline, and I found it actually more difficult for my brain to get into the story because I knew what was coming.
Speaker C: So I have to somewhere find that happy plots or medium where I haven’t yet, but I haven’t outlined every big event because then my brain gets bored.
Speaker B: So you need to be more like a discovery.
Speaker C: Yes, I definitely write by discovery.
Speaker C: And even with book two, I had this outline, and I mean, pages on pages and every single thing that needed to happen in the book.
Speaker C: And I had it written down, and it looks nothing like that either.
Speaker C: Every time I try to outline something, it ends up being different outline.
Speaker C: So I’m like, well, I guess it’s a starting point.
Speaker C: But the first book took the longest.
Speaker C: It did take a long time, but then the prequel book, I wrote in six weeks.
Speaker C: Seven weeks.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker C: And then I wrote Dragon Bound, which was for an anthology and is now free with my newsletter.
Speaker C: And that one is like just a novella link.
Speaker C: And I wrote that in two weeks.
Speaker C: So I’m getting quicker.
Speaker B: Yes, definitely.
Speaker B: So it took you three years to write the first draft, and then what did you do once you had that first draft?
Speaker C: So I finished that first draft in November of 2020, and I immediately bought all of the books on how you query and how you find an agent and who to message and email and send letters and manuscripts to.
Speaker C: And I squared for a couple of months, realized that that process was going to take the better part of a decade, and found TikTok, where all of your publishing dreams come true.
Speaker B: If you’re good.
Speaker C: There is a ton of resources on TikTok, and the majority of the authors on TikTok are so willing and open with information and are willing to help and are willing to point you in the direction of resources and where you do things that I just was like, you know, I don’t know that I want to take that long to publish this.
Speaker C: I know myself, and I know if it takes ten to 15 years to publish, I’m not going to keep going.
Speaker B: I don’t even think that’s a youth thing.
Speaker B: I think that’s just a human thing.
Speaker C: And I know there are people who have done it, and more power to them.
Speaker C: They amaze me.
Speaker C: The perseverance and dedication that that takes to just wade through and keep pushing and pushing and pushing until it’s published is amazing.
Speaker C: I have nothing but admiration for those authors.
Speaker C: I think they’re just superhuman, almost.
Speaker C: But I know my brain.
Speaker C: I would not have continued.
Speaker C: I would have seen it as something that was taking up a lot of time and pulling me away from my family and my children and the things that they do, and it wasn’t going to be seen by anyone.
Speaker C: So I knew that that wasn’t going to be something that was going to be beneficial for me.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: So I self published.
Speaker B: So I did not realize you started self published because I ran into you because you were talking about issues with your publisher.
Speaker B: So how did that happen?
Speaker B: If you self published, how did you then end up with a publisher?
Speaker C: So that seems to be more of a trend lately.
Speaker C: Authors are self publishing, and then publishers, agents and the like are finding them that way.
Speaker C: This is what happened to me.
Speaker C: I self published.
Speaker C: I made a lot of friends and connections on Tik tok, which is where my editor found me, and she said, I know that you’re self published.
Speaker C: I know that you’re not necessarily in the market for a publisher.
Speaker C: And I wasn’t.
Speaker C: I had no intention at all.
Speaker C: And she said, but if you ever feel like working with someone, please let me know.
Speaker C: I would be thrilled to work with you.
Speaker C: And I was like, well, okay.
Speaker C: Conversation can’t hurt, right?
Speaker C: So we had a conversation, and what they were offering was amazing.
Speaker C: I mean, it was the deal that would make me go to a publisher.
Speaker C: I wanted full control.
Speaker C: I wanted creative control.
Speaker C: I didn’t want anyone to have to be able to tell me, oh, well, you can’t write that, or we’re not going to publish that because we don’t agree that this should be in a book, or I don’t want my books to be whitewashed.
Speaker C: I don’t want my LGBTQ characters to be taken out.
Speaker C: Those are things that were very important to me when I was writing, that were in my books.
Speaker C: And I didn’t want anyone telling me that that was something that I needed to tone down or not write.
Speaker C: That was a big, big factor in staying the self publishing course.
Speaker C: But they were like, no, you have full control.
Speaker C: The only thing that we would have an issue with would be, like, problematic things, which, if you’re an author, you.
Speaker B: Shouldn’T be doing that anyways.
Speaker C: Exactly.
Speaker C: I was like, okay, if you’re a.
Speaker B: Human, let’s not limit that to authors.
Speaker C: Right?
Speaker C: Can we just not be problematic?
Speaker C: How about that?
Speaker C: That would be great.
Speaker C: But yeah.
Speaker C: I was like, okay, well, that’s wonderful.
Speaker C: And it was a company that was run by women.
Speaker C: It had a woman owner.
Speaker C: It was diverse.
Speaker C: They weren’t just a bunch of sea of white faces.
Speaker C: The owner is actually Latina.
Speaker C: And I was very excited.
Speaker C: I was like, okay, I get to work with women.
Speaker C: I get to work with diverse women.
Speaker C: This is where I want to be.
Speaker C: And I was very excited.
Speaker C: Unfortunately, that did not work out.
Speaker C: Things happened.
Speaker C: I don’t exactly have all of the details of what happened, but it was just a sad situation that could have been something really, really amazing for a community that just kind of fell apart.
Speaker C: So I had to make a decision then, do I keep going?
Speaker C: Because there was a moment where I was like, do I want to do this alone again?
Speaker C: Especially after working with a team.
Speaker C: When you work with a team of people, this profession can be so isolating.
Speaker B: Well, I think that’s probably about the time that you posted the initial video on TikTok that I came across was probably during that questioning time.
Speaker C: Yeah, because I sat with it for probably about a week.
Speaker C: Just like, I’m not going to make any decisions.
Speaker C: I’m not going to do anything.
Speaker C: And I had friends, other authors that were like, no, you know, just get it back out there.
Speaker C: Just put it back out.
Speaker C: You’ve done this before.
Speaker C: You can do it again.
Speaker C: Don’t let this stop you.
Speaker C: But it was a blow.
Speaker C: It was a really, really big blow for me.
Speaker C: And I struggled that experience.
Speaker C: They were able to do a lot of things that I cannot do for myself as an author.
Speaker C: It’s really not looked well upon.
Speaker C: If you start cold messaging people to collaborate with or to help promote your work, that’s not something that many people are going to take.
Speaker C: Well, not that I’ve blamed them if.
Speaker B: I was wrong, having gotten those messages, I agree.
Speaker C: It’s not something you do.
Speaker C: And I didn’t have the type of connections I didn’t have.
Speaker C: You know, I am an extroverted introvert.
Speaker B: Forced to be an extrovert in certain situations, but you’d prefer not to be.
Speaker C: And I enjoy it.
Speaker C: There are times when I very much enjoy being in the center of everything and being loud and just putting all this energy out, but then I have to kind of pull back and be like, okay, I need a break because that’s too much for me.
Speaker C: And that makes it difficult to reach out to 2030 people.
Speaker C: I have a hard time maintaining relationships on that level with that many people.
Speaker C: It’s just a lot.
Speaker C: I have a very close knit group of friends that I’ve made, the majority.
Speaker C: I’ve been on TikTok that I communicate with pretty much every day.
Speaker C: At least once a week, we check in.
Speaker C: We have great relationships.
Speaker C: But Nightshade had that with dozens upon dozens of authors and readers and book talkers and influencers, and that was wonderful.
Speaker C: That’s what I needed.
Speaker C: So it was hard to think, God, how am I going to go from having these resources and this team of people who believe in my work and help promote my work and get the word out there and have all these connections to go back to just being me with my five or six people?
Speaker C: And you know, it’s a lot.
Speaker C: It was a lot to think about, and it was very disheartening.
Speaker C: And I almost stopped.
Speaker C: I’m not going to lie.
Speaker C: It was almost enough for me.
Speaker C: It just was overwhelming and not a great feeling.
Speaker B: Now, before we step into what you did next, because I kind of know what came next.
Speaker B: What we didn’t touch on was, before you got hooked up with the publisher, did you edit your book at all or did you just publish the first draft?
Speaker B: And what is that editing process look like?
Speaker C: No.
Speaker C: So between me and my CP, who is an amazing editor, we went through my book probably 45 to 50 times.
Speaker C: Like, it was just that I never wanted to look at that book again.
Speaker C: For the rest, I was like, I don’t even want to hear the name of this book anymore, and now I have to promote it.
Speaker C: But we did.
Speaker C: Yeah, so we edited it.
Speaker C: It went through so many edits and proofreading and all of the things before it was ready.
Speaker C: It took us a couple of months to get through that process.
Speaker C: But I mean, we were just working on my book.
Speaker C: We didn’t have other projects, so we could solely focus every single day on that.
Speaker C: Which was nice, right?
Speaker B: And then I imagine once the publisher picked you up, they also went through at least a round of let’s make sure that it’s good.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker C: So before they republished Amulet, they sent it to an editor as well who somehow managed to still find, like, a comma that shouldn’t have been there or a misspelled word.
Speaker C: And I’m like, how do you go through that many edits and there are still grammar errors?
Speaker B: It happens.
Speaker C: Zero doubt that I could still send it to a different editor and they would probably still find something.
Speaker B: I mean, at some point you have to decide, I’m done spending money on this.
Speaker B: It’s never going to be perfect.
Speaker C: Yeah, and that’s what I kept calling myself because I didn’t want to put it out close, like, oh my God, I’m an indie.
Speaker C: If there’s a single mistake, everyone is going to drag me for it.
Speaker C: Like, they’re going to be like, oh, see, indies, they can’t do that from them.
Speaker C: Yeah, but I kept telling myself, you know, I myself have an avid reader.
Speaker C: I have been immersing myself in books for literally as long as I can remember.
Speaker C: I read Old Yeller in second grade.
Speaker C: Little Women was my favorite book when I lived in Kentucky.
Speaker C: I love books and I can’t think of a single book where I have about at least one typo, right?
Speaker B: Same.
Speaker C: So I was like, well, I guess it’s okay.
Speaker C: I’m just going to have to deal with it.
Speaker B: I mean, if the book’s been around as long as Little Women have no hope for the rest of us, right?
Speaker B: I mean, it gets republished every how many years?
Speaker C: Right?
Speaker B: Because we didn’t touch on this.
Speaker B: Your publishing company essentially decided to close and left whoever was there out in the wind.
Speaker B: So you publish or publish you post this video on TikTok with I don’t even remember what the you were crying.
Speaker B: I remember that.
Speaker B: And basically asking for help.
Speaker B: And the response was insane.
Speaker B: You had so many people commenting and then you decided to start a discord for all these different jobs to come together.
Speaker B: What led you to that decision?
Speaker C: I wanted the team.
Speaker C: I wanted to not feel like I was going at it alone again.
Speaker C: That was the thing that pulled me out of, oh, my God, do I even continue?
Speaker C: I was just sitting there one day and I was thinking and I was like, we’ve got all of these groups, we’ve got 20 books, which is a fantastic resource.
Speaker C: I mean, if you have a question, you can go there and they have pretty much anything you could ask somewhere on that site.
Speaker C: But it’s not very interactive.
Speaker C: It’s not meant to be.
Speaker C: That’s not what it’s there for.
Speaker C: It’s supposed to be a teaching tool.
Speaker C: You’re supposed to be able to go and look at the resources and find your answers.
Speaker C: It’s not really so much a, hey, if you are looking to start an art team, these people are interested in that.
Speaker C: Like, that’s not something that was available in 20 books.
Speaker C: It’s not something that was available in a lot of the readers or writers groups that I am a part of on Facebook and Tik Tok and all of these things.
Speaker C: There wasn’t a platform that I had yet found.
Speaker C: I’m sure there is one because I’m not reinventing the wheel, right?
Speaker B: You’re just making the wheel more accessible to you.
Speaker B: Right?
Speaker C: I was like, okay, so I’m going to just try this and let’s see what happens.
Speaker C: And I got the idea, and I was like, well, where would I format this?
Speaker C: And at first I was like, well, Facebook is where everyone does it, but couldn’t figure out how to really, like, how many Facebook groups do I even have to make to have every aspect of this journey covered there?
Speaker C: And someone mentioned to me discord, and I wish that I could remember who did, but I think I was kind of in a bit of a mental bad place, so I don’t remember.
Speaker C: But someone mentioned discord, and I was like, okay, well, I’ve never really used discord out of, like, playing Borderlands with my husband every now and then, so let’s figure it out.
Speaker C: And that’s kind of where that idea came from.
Speaker C: And I really, really wanted it to be a place where if you’re a writer and this is your debut novel and you need Arc readers, you can go in there and you can say, hey, this is my book.
Speaker C: Here’s the blurb.
Speaker C: I need Arc readers and get at least some people.
Speaker C: I wanted you to be able to go in there as a reader who is looking to be on street teams or beta teams or Arc teams and say, hey, I really would like to do this, and have your pick of 50 or 60 authors who need people to do that, like personal assistance.
Speaker C: We’ve got personal assistants in there and web designers and graphic designers.
Speaker C: And I mean, if narrators yes.
Speaker C: Narrators.
Speaker C: I love my narrators.
Speaker C: Just so many different people who do different things in this industry as independent people.
Speaker B: Let’s connect them all together.
Speaker C: Yeah, okay.
Speaker B: So you decide to do that.
Speaker B: And first, initially you posted I mean, you may have started the discord already at this point, but I know I saw a video that was like, who would be interested in this before I joined it?
Speaker B: And then there was another, like, shortly thereafter, another video that was like, hey, here’s the link.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: So the first video, I hadn’t even really decided what the format would look like, what platform I was going to use to create this thing.
Speaker C: And then I got such a huge response from it that I was like, oh, okay, well, I guess I need to set something.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker B: And then you very much refined it over time because you definitely have added a lot more I don’t know what they’re called, community rooms, whatever the things are called on discord.
Speaker B: I have no idea.
Speaker B: You’ve refined it over time to add in because narrators weren’t there initially.
Speaker B: And then you added, like, all these, like, if you do this here’s, your, like, introduce yourself and here so people can find you kind of thing.
Speaker B: And then obviously, you posted it on TikTok for here’s the link if you want to join.
Speaker B: So in the midst of all of that, you’re also trying to figure out how to market your book so while you’re discourting and creating another community of people, what were you doing to help now promote your book as just you?
Speaker C: Not enough.
Speaker C: I don’t understand enough of all of the algorithms and systems and things to understand what I did wrong, but I did something wrong.
Speaker C: I went from selling at least a couple of copies a day before I had a publisher, and now my book seems to be invisible.
Speaker C: The whole thing just seems to be relegated to some purgatory on Amazon.
Speaker C: And I think some of that has to do with the fact that there was multiple copies of the book for so long, it’s still hard to kind of search it.
Speaker C: I ended up changing the entire title of the prequel to kind of circumvent that problem with amulet.
Speaker C: And I’m hoping that with the release of this next book, it will pull it further out.
Speaker C: But there is definitely a swamp to wade through from having multiple versions and copies and links of the same book that I still haven’t managed to untangle.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: Just so you know, I just searched your name on Amazon and pulled up your book.
Speaker B: It is viewable.
Speaker C: Maybe we’re getting somewhere.
Speaker C: It was rough for a while.
Speaker C: It wasn’t until just a couple of weeks ago that you could even pull up my version of the book.
Speaker C: For whatever reason, for the longest time, the publisher’s version was still the one coming up.
Speaker C: And you couldn’t buy it.
Speaker C: You couldn’t buy it, you couldn’t read it.
Speaker C: It was just not there.
Speaker C: And while it was live on my end, my version of the book, you just couldn’t find it.
Speaker C: You could only find the version that you couldn’t get.
Speaker C: So I’m hoping that now that that has finally been rectified, this will start getting a little bit better.
Speaker C: But it has definitely been a journey.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: So now obviously, you had some unique situation where most people aren’t going to have to deal with crap.
Speaker B: I can’t use the publishers version anymore.
Speaker B: I have to create my whole now you did have the advantage to you’d already done on your own before, so you kind of knew, here’s what the steps I need to take to at least get my version back up there.
Speaker B: Did you have to email them or anything to pull down the publishers version.
Speaker C: Or how does that work?
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker C: That was a month long nightmare.
Speaker C: Amazon is not the easiest of platforms to work with as an Andy.
Speaker C: Their policies and procedures are very convoluted and one person will tell you that they will take care of the situation, and another person will tell you that there’s nothing they can do.
Speaker C: So it’s an uphill battle of trying to make sure things are done, even though, like, everything that I publish is copyrighted through the Library of Congress long before it ever hits anything.
Speaker C: I hold copyrights for everything.
Speaker C: So even though I have a copyright, even though it’s documented, amazon.
Speaker C: Still gave me trouble.
Speaker C: They did not want to take it down.
Speaker C: It took weeks and weeks for them to finally explain to me that the reason they weren’t taking it down and couldn’t take it down was because it wasn’t even them that had it up.
Speaker C: It was from Ingram Spark, which is another distributive.
Speaker C: So I had to reach back out to the publisher, I had to reach back out to Ingram, I had to send proof of copyright and all of these things all over again until right in the middle of last.
Speaker C: Month I want to say is when it finally finally came down and I have started to finally see page reads again and finally see some interest building.
Speaker B: But it’s like starting from ground zero again.
Speaker C: It’s almost worse than starting from ground zero because you build a base of reader base and you make these connections and you connect with these readers and they enjoy the book, they enjoy the story, they want more.
Speaker C: And then you let them down.
Speaker C: You tell them they’re getting something and then they don’t get it, right?
Speaker C: And that can be very damaging for an author’s reputation, for readers.
Speaker C: Trust in what you’re going to provide.
Speaker C: It can be something that’s really, really hard to scramble back from.
Speaker C: But I’ll get there.
Speaker C: I’m working it, I’m getting there.
Speaker B: Part of it that would help too, is just the fact that you’ve been so honest through this whole thing on social media, like, hey, this is what’s happening.
Speaker B: It’s out of my control, but I’m trying to do what I can.
Speaker B: If something goes wrong and you just go radio silent, no one’s going to trust you anymore because you’re just like not telling them what’s happening.
Speaker C: Right?
Speaker C: And that was my big thing.
Speaker C: I was like, okay, I have to say something because if I don’t, then I just look like someone who’s flaky.
Speaker C: Yeah, flaky.
Speaker C: Trying to think of a word that wasn’t a curse word because the phrase that was in my head was not PG.
Speaker B: I have an explicit warning.
Speaker B: You’re cool.
Speaker B: I don’t care.
Speaker C: About the people’s a****, right?
Speaker C: Like, you just look like you.
Speaker B: No, I promise it’s coming right.
Speaker C: After a while, even the most rabid fans are going to be like, oh my God, this woman is full of s***.
Speaker C: Like, I’m so done with right?
Speaker C: I just wanted to be very open and very transparent and be like, hey, this is what is happening.
Speaker C: This is what is going on.
Speaker C: And I haven’t seen numbers dropping on social media.
Speaker C: So I haven’t seen like a mass exodus of followers from Tik tok I haven’t seen a ton of people leaving the reader group on Facebook.
Speaker C: I haven’t seen any of any of that affecting the discord.
Speaker C: So, you know, cross your fingers and you hope that’s enough.
Speaker C: And really, it’s such a new thing in the grand scheme of publishing to be an author on in the public eye.
Speaker C: Representing yourself, making your own statements.
Speaker C: That such a new thing that everything is kind of hit or miss, everything is a trial run, everything is well, let’s just hope, right?
Speaker B: And there’s nothing you can do about it either, because that’s the name of even if you’re with a publisher, that’s the name of the game.
Speaker B: You put out this book and hope people want to buy it, right?
Speaker B: You don’t really know until you’ve done it.
Speaker C: Yes, there are books that I have read that people have never heard of that are just absolutely amazing pieces of work.
Speaker C: And I mean, people get really angry when I say it, but there is an aspect of luck to this profession.
Speaker C: You can do everything right.
Speaker C: And.
Speaker B: You’Re also at the mercy of algorithms for social media, too.
Speaker B: If the algorithm decides it hates you during your book release, there’s nothing you can do about it.
Speaker B: I mean, it’s same for like, posting podcast episodes.
Speaker B: I may have one video, get 500, or I don’t know that I’ve had to get 1000 views.
Speaker B: Still relatively new podcast, and then the next one will have like ten.
Speaker B: And I’m like, I can’t do anything different.
Speaker C: And it’s so funny too, to see what performs where, like, some people on TikTok, for example, post these page flips and they are like, they’ve got 300,000 followers.
Speaker C: I post a page flip and I’ve got like ten views, but I posted on Instagram and I’ve got 20,000.
Speaker C: There is an amount of luck to this.
Speaker C: There really, really is.
Speaker C: And you just have to kind of persevere it is.
Speaker B: And it’s not even like the luck you can create yourself if social media gods are working in your favor today.
Speaker C: Absolutely.
Speaker C: It’s either that or spend a fortune on which even that some people don’t have great success with.
Speaker C: And they’re doing all the right things.
Speaker C: Their cover is good, their blurb is good, their writing is polished, they’ve done all of the proper things.
Speaker C: And even then, that doesn’t always work.
Speaker C: It’s just, you know, I mean, I think it has a higher success rate because you’re literally paying to put your stuff in front of people, right?
Speaker C: But yeah, there’s also a learning curve.
Speaker B: To that to make sure it’s getting in front of the right people.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker B: I actually just last week stopped all ad campaigns because I’m like my listen.
Speaker B: I just do it on podcasts, but I’m like, my listens aren’t going up.
Speaker B: That means something’s not working.
Speaker B: I need to stop throwing money at it.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: And some of it is just trying to educate yourself on how these things work.
Speaker C: Because I’m an author, I don’t have a marketing brain necessarily.
Speaker C: My brain doesn’t really understand.
Speaker C: I mean, I understand, but I don’t understand it on the technical, mathematical level that some people do.
Speaker C: Keywords are important because when people are searching, they’re putting in keywords.
Speaker C: And those are the words that are going to pull up your book.
Speaker C: But then you have to go and you have to do research and oh, well, if I put magic as a keyword, you’re probably going to pull up Harry Potter long before you pull up angular.
Speaker C: That stars on fire, right?
Speaker B: You’re going to pull up how many dozens of copies of Harry Potter that are published today exactly.
Speaker C: In every language known to man, plus every other you’re going to pull up Wheel of Time and all of these huge, huge books.
Speaker C: Like, that’s not going to do me a lot of good, right?
Speaker C: So you kind of have to get really deep into understanding algorithms and numbers and things that my brain doesn’t really work well with.
Speaker B: I much prefer, like, tell me what to put.
Speaker B: I finally found something this last week because I’m trying.
Speaker B: So I spent not this past week, but the week before at a podcast conference.
Speaker B: And one of the things, like, the social media class has talked about is, like, using hashtags that are relevant and whatever.
Speaker B: So I come home and I’m like, all right, let’s research, like, what hashtag should I be using?
Speaker B: Or like, how many because, like, if you post a hashtag that podcast, the hashtag podcast has how many millions, billions of tags that are like, you’re going to get lost in the shuffle.
Speaker B: So I’m like, what’s a good post number?
Speaker B: My social media scheduler has, like, it’ll show you here’s how many posts get seen in this in the last hour or whatever.
Speaker B: So, like, in my Googling, what am I looking for?
Speaker B: It was like, look for ones that have between, like, ten and 30,000 views.
Speaker B: That’s like, a good you get over a million, 2 million, a billion views.
Speaker B: You’re just going to get lost.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker B: The things that you have to learn and just keep notes of, use these now.
Speaker B: Good thing is, with my podcast, I can keep the same hashtags for the most part, but it’s like, just making sure to use ones that I have different ones on TikTok than I do on Instagram, than I do on Facebook.
Speaker B: And then how many hashtags are you supposed to use on each platform so you don’t get shadow banned.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: And there’s so much to learn.
Speaker C: Like, I’m finally starting to do very, very inexpensive ad campaigns just to kind of push it back out now that you can find it again and actually buy it.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker B: Find one that doesn’t say not available.
Speaker C: Right, exactly.
Speaker C: So now that you can do that, I’m like, okay, I just started a Facebook ad yesterday.
Speaker C: But even doing that, like, I’ve learned so much from the first time I ever ran an ad.
Speaker C: I put together this very compelling visual presentation that really ropes you in, but then failed to put a link is kind of crucial.
Speaker C: I’m sitting here spending money, and people are liking it, and they’re commenting on it.
Speaker C: But let’s face it, we live in a very right now.
Speaker C: Push a button age.
Speaker C: And if there’s no button to push, they’re not going to go to Amazon and look it up.
Speaker B: No, they’re on Facebook.
Speaker C: They don’t want to close that app, go to another app.
Speaker C: Like, you need to have those things there.
Speaker B: They want to click a button and it takes there.
Speaker B: Exactly.
Speaker C: But I didn’t know how to do that at first, so I just didn’t.
Speaker C: And I was like, well, getting the word out is enough.
Speaker C: That’s never the right answer.
Speaker C: But I didn’t know better.
Speaker C: So you learn as you go and you make mistakes, and sometimes they’re costly mistakes.
Speaker B: Yeah, unfortunately.
Speaker C: Yeah, unfortunately.
Speaker C: But you know, you learn and you do better and you grow.
Speaker C: And it’s not unlike the traditional publishing route.
Speaker C: You’re just more involved.
Speaker C: So whereas I could have not published myself, and I could have kept querying, and I could have kept reaching out to agents and publishers and all of the things that you’re supposed to do, quote, unquote, and it still would have been a long arguish process to have, like, stay in.
Speaker C: I just did it differently.
Speaker C: I published, and then now I have to keep pushing and pushing and pushing.
Speaker C: But at least this way there’s the potential that it will work and not say that that was a bad phrasing.
Speaker C: Actually, I heard it as I said it.
Speaker C: Because I do believe that if you’re persistent enough that you can find a publisher and you can find an agent, I truly do believe that if you keep at it, unless you just have not done any of the things right, I think that you absolutely can find a publisher and find an agent.
Speaker C: I truly believe that.
Speaker C: But it is a long process and sometimes it takes years, decades, and a lot of rejection.
Speaker C: And that’s hard.
Speaker C: Even if you know it’s coming, it’s hard.
Speaker B: I just got a brutal review yesterday.
Speaker C: Those are the worst.
Speaker C: I don’t even look anymore.
Speaker B: I went from it was so funny, though, because I had one, so my reviews would be on audiobooks, so I had one audiobook that was like, god, the gist of it was, this is the worst narrator in the whole wide world.
Speaker B: And oh my God, don’t listen to any of her stuff.
Speaker B: And then I had another one on a different book that was like, oh my God, I love this so much, like, on the same day.
Speaker B: And I’m like, we’re just going to start ignoring unless the review because telling me I’m, like the most awful narrator on the planet without telling me why is unhelpful.
Speaker B: I can’t fix if I don’t know what’s wrong.
Speaker B: And it could very well just be that they just don’t like my voice, which happens same as like, some writers are just not for some readers.
Speaker B: That is the name of the game of putting yourself out there with a public product, whether it be a book, YouTube videos, narrating, any other thing that you would randomly put yourself out there for so many things.
Speaker B: So many things that it may just be they had a bad day that day.
Speaker B: I don’t know.
Speaker C: Not everything is for everyone.
Speaker C: And that’s okay.
Speaker C: You hear it all the time, especially on TikTok where these discussions happen constantly, just all the time.
Speaker C: And that’s okay.
Speaker C: But yes, it does really, really kind of sting when you get one, though, that’s just like, oh, this is awful.
Speaker C: Well, okay, do you want to elaborate?
Speaker C: Because I can’t speak for anyone else, but when I first started getting reviews and reading reviews, and I would automatically go to that one because I wanted to know I wanted to know where can I improve?
Speaker C: What are they like, is there anything that’s consistent throughout?
Speaker C: Whatever.
Speaker C: And even in some of the good reviews, one of the constant themes for Amulet was started slow.
Speaker C: Okay.
Speaker B: Almost every book does.
Speaker C: Yes, they do.
Speaker C: But I can use that.
Speaker C: I can try to figure out how to spice it up a little bit, put a little bit of action in some of this world building that is necessary, especially for a fantasy book.
Speaker C: But I can take those critiques and I can use them in future projects so that I can do it better.
Speaker B: I think I saw one author on TikTok, Tae, something about write your book, like how you would normally write your book, but then basically cut off until you get to your first there’s action going on scene and that’s where you start your book.
Speaker B: And then if there’s vital information in the first part that was slower, obviously, inject that in where it would be appropriate later on, but kind of like start it on a scene that’s going to capture them.
Speaker C: Yup.
Speaker C: And it took me longer than I would like to admit to figure that one out because I’m doing this on my own.
Speaker C: I have a team.
Speaker C: I don’t have a lot of professionals behind me who do this and have done this for years.
Speaker C: So, yeah, Amulet, where I thought, okay, the book opens, and originally the book opened and the main character is asleep and her mom is waking her up.
Speaker C: It immediately jumps into an interaction between two women at the beginning of the book.
Speaker C: And I thought that was great.
Speaker C: But then throughout those empty bazillion edits, my CP said to me, you might want to put a prologue, maybe, or something that has a bit of action and a hook of what’s coming instead of just opening on a normal day and then the inciting event.
Speaker C: Yeah, that’s actually an older way of writing.
Speaker C: That’s more common with authors who were writing when I was young because it looks so you know, I’m mimicking the styles of Laura Ingles Wilder and Nora Roberts and Daniel Steele and these authors that have been in this business for ever, ever and ever, and had 100 books plus a piece.
Speaker C: I’m mimicking that style because that’s what I read.
Speaker C: That’s what I know.
Speaker C: And I learn and I grow as I continue to write and as I continue to make contacts in this industry with other authors and narrators and readers and all of these people who have these little tidbits of wisdom that you just kind of pick up and you look at it, you go, okay, is this something I can use or not?
Speaker C: Because not everything, again, is for everyone told me, oh, well, you know, amulet, for instance, has very, very mild spice.
Speaker C: It’s like one scene, and they basically like, kiss heavy.
Speaker C: And that’s it.
Speaker C: That’s the whole amount of spice in the whole first book.
Speaker C: And someone might look at me and say, you know, that could really use more spice.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker C: Well, you may be right for a different story.
Speaker C: You know, the prequel has a lot of nice, heavy spice in it, more explicit, more on the page stuff.
Speaker C: But the characters are older.
Speaker C: It’s a different dynamic.
Speaker C: I’m not telling the same story.
Speaker C: So, you know, not everything is for every book or every person.
Speaker C: I’m never going to write horror.
Speaker C: I know that.
Speaker C: I’m not going to write a horror.
Speaker B: I don’t think I could entrench my brain into.
Speaker C: There’s no way.
Speaker B: I feel like it would damage my psyche too much to be so entrenched and dark like that.
Speaker C: Yeah, I can’t do that.
Speaker C: I’m not going to do that.
Speaker C: It’s not something that I’m going to branch out into.
Speaker C: So if a horror author comes and gives me advice, I have to be aware their horror author is coming from very genre specific places.
Speaker B: Now, if Stephen King wants to give me advice on how to get in with a publisher, by all means, I’m going to listen.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: Mr.
Speaker C: King, if you want to critique my work, please listen until I can’t listen anymore.
Speaker C: But even then, you know, I need to be aware that some of the things you’re going to tell me may not be for me that I’m going to be able to use because I don’t write a genre.
Speaker C: But that’s kind of the beauty of places like Tik Tok because you get such an amalgamation of different things.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: And you get all of these little nuggets, and sometimes you can pick it up and look at it and say, oh, well, I can take this little piece off of it.
Speaker C: And sometimes you look at it and say, no, that one’s not for me, but here, I’ll put it back for someone else to pick up.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker A: J.
Speaker A: L liked the story of Sleeping Beauty when she was a kid.
Speaker A: Sleeping Beauty, or Little Briar Rose, also titled in English as the Sleeping Beauty in the woods, is a classic fairy tale about a princess who has cursed to sleep for 100 years by an evil fairy to be awakened by a handsome prince at the end of them.
Speaker A: The good fairy, realizing that the Princess would be frightened if alone, when she awakens, uses her wand to put every living person and animal in the palace asleep, to awaken when the princess does.
Speaker A: The earliest known version of the story is found in the Narrative Purse Forest.
Speaker A: Composed between 1330 and 1344.
Speaker A: The tale was first published by Gian Batista Basil in his collection of tales titled The Pentagon, published post humorously in 1634.
Speaker A: Basil’s version was later adapted and published by Charles Perrault in historus Ocantess du temps Passe Innxseven.
Speaker A: The version that was later collected and printed by the Brothers Grimm was an orally transmitted version of the literary tale published by Perrault.
Speaker A: The Arne Thompson classification system for folktales classifies Sleeping Beauty as being a 410 tail type, meaning it includes a princess who is forced into an enchanted sleep and is later awakened reversing the magic placed upon her.
Speaker A: The story has been adapted many times throughout history and has continued to be retold by modern storytellers throughout various media.
Speaker A: Today we’ll be reading the King of England and his three sons.
Speaker A: This story has been noted to be similar to the original Sleeping Beauty story.
Speaker A: Don’t forget we’re reading LeMorte de Arthur, the story of King Arthur and of his noble Knights of the Round Table on our Patreon.
Speaker A: You can find the link in the show notes.
Speaker A: The King of England and his Three Sons once upon a time there was an old king who had three sons.
Speaker A: An old king fell very sick one time, and there was nothing at all could make him well but some golden apples from a far country.
Speaker A: So the three brothers went on horseback to look for some of these apples.
Speaker A: They set off together, and when they came to a crossroads, they halted and refreshed themselves a bit, and then they agreed to meet on a certain time, and not one was to go home before the other.
Speaker A: So Valentine took the right, and Oliver went straight on, and poor Jack took the left.
Speaker A: To make my long story short, I shall follow poor Jack and let the other two take their chance, for I don’t think there was much good in them.
Speaker A: Off poor Jack rides over hills, dales, valleys and mountains, through woolly woods and sheepwalks, where the old chap never sounded his hollow bugle horn further than I can tell you tonight, or ever intend to tell you.
Speaker A: At last he came to an old house near a great forest, and there was an old man sitting out by the door, and his look was enough to frighten you or anyone else.
Speaker A: And the old man said to him.
Speaker D: Good morning, my king son.
Speaker A: Good morning to you, old gentleman.
Speaker A: Was the young prince’s answer.
Speaker A: Frightened out of his wits though he was, he didn’t like to give in.
Speaker A: The old gentleman told him to dismount, and to go in to have some refreshment and to put his horse in the stable such as it was.
Speaker A: Jack soon felt much better after having something to eat and began to ask the old gentleman how he knew he was a Kingsun.
Speaker A: Oh, dear, said the old man.
Speaker D: I knew that you were a Kingston, and I know what is your business better than what you do yourself.
Speaker D: So you will have to stay here tonight.
Speaker D: And when you are in bed, you mustn’t be frightened, whatever you may hear.
Speaker D: There will come all manner of frogs and snakes, and some will try to get into your eyes and your mouth.
Speaker D: But mind don’t stir the least bit, or you will turn into one of those things yourself.
Speaker A: Poor Jack didn’t know what to make of this, but however he ventured to go to bed just as he thought to have a bit of sleep.
Speaker A: Round and over and under him they came, but he never stirred an inch all night.
Speaker D: Well, my son, how are you this morning?
Speaker A: Oh, I’m very well, thank you, but I didn’t have much rest.
Speaker D: Well, never mind that.
Speaker D: You’ve got on very well so far.
Speaker D: But you have a great deal to go through before you can have the golden apples to go to your father.
Speaker D: You’d better come and have some breakfast before you start on your way to my other brother’s house.
Speaker D: You will have to leave your own horse here with me until you come back again and tell me everything about how you get on after that.
Speaker A: Out came a fresh horse for the young prince, and the old man gave him a ball of yarn and he flung it between the horse’s two ears.
Speaker A: Off he went, as fast as the wind, which the wind behind could not catch the wind before, until he came to the second oldest brother s house.
Speaker A: When he rode up to the door, he had the same salute as from the first old man.
Speaker A: But this one was even uglier than the first one.
Speaker A: He had long gray hair and his teeth were curling out of his mouth, and his finger and toenails had not been cut for many thousand years.
Speaker A: He put the horse into a much better stable and called Jack in and gave him plenty to eat and drink, and they had a bit of a chat before they went to bed.
Speaker D: Well, my young son, said the old man, I suppose you are one of the King’s children, come to look for the golden apples to bring him back to health.
Speaker A: Yes, I’m the youngest of the three brothers and I should like to get them to go back with.
Speaker D: Well, don’t mind, my young son.
Speaker D: Before you go to bed tonight, I will send my eldest brother and will tell him what you want, and he won’t have much trouble in sending you on to the place where you must get the apples.
Speaker D: But mind not to stir tonight, no matter how you get bitten and stung, or else you will work great mischief to yourself.
Speaker A: The young man went to bed and bore all as he did the first night and got up the next morning well and hearty.
Speaker A: After a good breakfast, out comes a fresh horse and a ball of yarn to throw between his ears.
Speaker A: The old man told him to jump up quick, and said that he had made it all right with his eldest brother not to delay for anything whatever.
Speaker D: For, said he, you have a good deal to go through with.
Speaker D: In a very short and quick time.
Speaker A: He flung the ball and off he goes as quick as lightning, and comes to the eldest brother’s house.
Speaker A: The old man receives him very kindly, and told him he long wished to see him, and that he would go through his work like a man and come back safe and sound.
Speaker D: Tonight, said he, I will give you rest.
Speaker D: There shall nothin come to disturb you so that you may not feel sleepy for tomorrow and you must mind to get up middling early, for you’ve got to go and come all on the same day.
Speaker D: There will be no place for you to rest within thousands of miles of that place and if there was, you would stand in great danger never to come from there in your own form.
Speaker D: Now, my young prince, mind when I tell you.
Speaker D: Tomorrow, when you come inside of a very large castle which will be surrounded with black water, the first thing you will do you will tie your horse to a tree and you will see three beautiful swans in sight.
Speaker D: And you will say, swan Swan, carry me over in the name of the Griffin of the Greenwood.
Speaker D: And the swans will swim you over to the earth.
Speaker D: There will be three great entrances, the first guarded by four green giants, withdrawn, swords in their hands, the second by lions, the other by fiery serpents and dragons.
Speaker D: You will have to be there exactly at 01:00 and mind and leave there precisely at two and not a moment later, when the swans carry you over to the castle, you will pass all these things all fast asleep but you must not notice any of them.
Speaker D: When you go in, you will turn up to the right, you will see some grand rooms then you will go downstairs through the cooking kitchen and through a door on your left you go into a garden where you will find the apples you want for your father to get well.
Speaker D: After you fill your wallet, you make all speed you possibly can and call out for the swans to carry you over the same as before.
Speaker D: After you get on your horse, should you hear anything, shouting or making any noise after you be sure not to look back, as they will follow you for thousands of miles but when the time is up and you get near my place, it will be all over.
Speaker D: Well, now, my young man, I’ve told you all you have to do tomorrow, and mind, whatever you do, don’t look about you when you see all those frightful things asleep.
Speaker D: Keep a good heart and make haste from there and come back to me with all the speed you can.
Speaker D: I should like to know how my two brothers were when you left them and what they said to you about me.
Speaker A: Well, to tell the truth, before I left London, my father was sick and said I was to come here to look for the golden apples, for they were the only things that would do him good.
Speaker A: And when I came to your youngest brother, he told me many things I had to do before I came here.
Speaker A: And I thought once that your youngest brother put me in the wrong bed when he put all those snakes to bite me all night long until your second brother told me, so it was to be, and said it is the same here, but said you had none in your beds.
Speaker D: Well, let’s go to bed.
Speaker D: You need not fear.
Speaker D: There are no snakes here.
Speaker A: The young man went to bed and had a good night’s rest and got up the next morning as fresh as newly caught trout breakfast being over, out comes the other horse.
Speaker A: And while saddling and settling, the old man began to laugh and told the young gentleman that if he saw a pretty young lady not to stay with her too long because she might waken.
Speaker A: And then he would have.
Speaker A: To stay with her or to be turned into one of those unearthly monsters.
Speaker B: Like those he would have to pass.
Speaker A: By going into the castle.
Speaker A: You make me laugh so that I can scarcely buckle the saddle straps.
Speaker A: I think I shall make it all right, my uncle, if I see a young lady there, you may depend.
Speaker D: Well, my boy, I shall see how you will get on.
Speaker A: So he mounts his Arab steed and off he goes, like a shot out of a gun.
Speaker A: At last he comes inside of the castle.
Speaker A: He ties his horse safe to a tree and pulled out his watch.
Speaker A: It was then a quarter to one when he called out, swan, swan, carry me over for the name of the old griffin of the greenwood no sooner said than done.
Speaker A: A swan under each side and one in front took him over in a crack.
Speaker A: He got on his legs and walked quietly by all those giants, lions, fiery serpents, and all manner of other frightful things too numerous to mention while they were fast asleep, and that only for the space of 1 hour went.
Speaker A: Into the castle he goes, neck or nothing.
Speaker A: Turning to the right.
Speaker A: Upstairs he runs, and enters into a very grand bedroom, and sees a beautiful princess lying full stretch on a gold bedstead, fast asleep.
Speaker A: He gazed on her beautiful form with admiration, and he takes her.
Speaker A: Garter off and buckles it on his own leg and he buckles his on hers.
Speaker A: He also takes her gold watch and pocket handkerchief and exchanges his for hers.
Speaker A: After that he ventures to give her a kiss when she very nearly opened her eyes.
Speaker A: Seeing the time short off, he runs downstairs, and passing through the kitchen to go into the garden for the apples, he could see the cook all fours on her back on the middle of the floor, with the knife in one hand and a fork in the other.
Speaker A: He found the apples and filled the wallet, and on passing through the kitchen the cook nearly wakened, but he was obliged to make all the speed he possibly could.
Speaker A: As the time was nearly up, he called out for the swans and they managed to take him over, but they found that he was a little heavier than before.
Speaker A: No sooner than he had mounted his horse he could hear a tremendous noise.
Speaker A: The enchantment was broke and they tried to follow him but all to no purpose.
Speaker A: He was not long before he came to the oldest brother’s house and glad enough he was to see it, for the sight and the noise of all those things that were after him nearly frightened him to death.
Speaker D: Welcome my boy.
Speaker D: I’m proud to see you dismount and put the horse in the stable and come in and have some refreshments.
Speaker D: I know you’re hungry after all you have gone through in that castle and tell me all you did and all you saw there.
Speaker D: Other king’s sons went by here to go to that castle but they never came back alive and you’re the only one that ever broke the spell.
Speaker D: And now you must come with me with a sword in your hand and must cut my head off and must throw it in that well.
Speaker A: The young prince dismounts and put his horse in the stable and they go in to have some refreshments, for I can assure you he wanted some.
Speaker A: And after telling everything that passed, which the old gentleman was very pleased to hear, they both went for a walk together.
Speaker A: The young prince looking around and seeing the place looking dreadful as did the old man.
Speaker A: He could scarcely walk from his toenails curling up like ram’s horns that had not been cut for many hundred years and big long hair.
Speaker A: They come to a well and the old man gives the prince a sword and tells him to cut his head off and throw it in that well.
Speaker A: The young man has to do it against his wish but has to do it.
Speaker A: No sooner has he flung the head in the well, then up springs one of the finest young gentlemen you would wish to see.
Speaker A: And instead of the old house and the frightful looking place, it was changed into a beautiful hall and grounds.
Speaker A: And they went back and enjoyed themselves well and had a good laugh about the castle.
Speaker A: The young prince leaves this young gentleman in all his glory and he tells the young prince before leaving that he will see him again before long.
Speaker A: They have a jolly shake hands and off he goes to the next oldest brother.
Speaker A: And to make my long story short, he has to serve the other two brothers the same as the first.
Speaker A: Now the youngest brother began to ask him how things went on.
Speaker D: Did you see my two brothers?
Speaker B: Yes.
Speaker D: How did they look?
Speaker A: Oh, they looked very well.
Speaker A: I liked them much.
Speaker A: They told me many things what to do.
Speaker D: Well, did you go to the castle?
Speaker A: Yes, my uncle.
Speaker D: And will you tell me what you see in there?
Speaker D: Did you see the young lady?
Speaker A: Yes, I saw her and plenty of other frightful things.
Speaker D: Did you hear any snake biting you in my oldest brother’s bed?
Speaker A: No, there were none there.
Speaker A: I slept.
Speaker D: Well, you won’t have to sleep in the same bed tonight, you will have to cut my head off.
Speaker A: In the morning the young prince had a good night’s rest and changed all the appearance of the place by cutting his friends head off before he started.
Speaker A: In the morning a jolly shake hands and the uncle tells him it’s very probable he shall see him again soon when he’s not aware of it.
Speaker A: This one’s mansion was very pretty and the country around it beautiful.
Speaker A: After his head was cut off, off jack goes over hills, dales, valleys and mountains and very near losing his apples again.
Speaker A: At last he arrives at the crossroads where he has to meet his brothers on the very day appointed coming up to the place, he sees no tracks of horses and being very tired he lays himself down to sleep by tying the horse to his leg and putting the apples under his head.
Speaker A: Presently up come the other brothers the same time to the minute, and found him fast asleep and they would not waken him, but said to one another let us see what sort of apples he’s got under his head.
Speaker A: So they took and tasted them and found they were very different to theirs.
Speaker A: They took and changed his apples for theirs and off to London as fast as they could and left the poor fellow sleeping.
Speaker A: After a while he awoke and seeing the tracks of other horses he mounted and off with him not thinking anything about the apples being changed.
Speaker A: He still had a long way to go and by the time he got near London he could hear all the bells in the town ringing, but did not know what was the matter till he rode up to the palace, when he came to know that his father was recovered by his brother’s apples.
Speaker A: When he got there, his two brothers were off to some sports for a while and the king was glad to see his youngest son and very anxious to taste his apples.
Speaker A: But when he found out that they were not good and thought that they were more for poisoning him, he sent immediately for the headsman to be had his youngest son, who was taken away there and then in a carriage.
Speaker A: But instead of the headsman taking his head off, he took him to a forest not far from the town because he had pity on him and there left him to take his chance, when presently up comes a big hairy bear limping upon three legs.
Speaker A: The prince, poor fellow, climbed up a tree, frightened of him.
Speaker A: But the bear told him to come down, that it was no use of him to stop there.
Speaker A: With hard persuasion, poor Jack comes down and the bear speaks to him and bids him come here to me.
Speaker A: I will not do you any harm.
Speaker A: It’s better for you to come with me and have some refreshments.
Speaker A: I know that you are hungry all this time.
Speaker A: The poor young prince says, no, I’m not hungry.
Speaker A: But I was very frightened when I saw you coming to me first as I had no place to run away from you, the bear said, I was also afraid of you when I saw that gentleman sitting you down from the carriage.
Speaker A: I thought you would have guns with you and that you would not mind killing me if you saw me.
Speaker A: But when I saw the gentleman going away with the carriage and leaving you behind by yourself, I made bold to come to you to see who you were.
Speaker A: And now I know who you are very well.
Speaker A: Are you not the king’s youngest son?
Speaker A: I’ve seen you and your brothers and lots of other gentlemen in this wood many times.
Speaker A: Now, before we go from here, I must tell you that I am in disguise and I shall take you where we are stopping.
Speaker A: The young prince tells him everything from first to last how he started in search of the apples and about the three old men and about the castle, and how he was served at last by his father after he came home.
Speaker A: And instead of the headsman taking his head off, he was kind enough to leave him his life.
Speaker A: And here I am now under your protection.
Speaker A: The bear tells him, come on, my brother.
Speaker A: There shall no harm come to you as long as you’re with me.
Speaker A: So he takes him up to the tents, and when they see him coming, the girls begin to laugh and say, here’s our Jubil coming with a young gentleman.
Speaker A: When he advanced nearer the tents, they all knew that he was the young prince that had passed by that way many times before.
Speaker A: And when Jubil went to change himself, he called most of them together into one tent and told them all about him and to be kind to him.
Speaker A: And so they were, for there was nothing that he desired but what he had the same as if he was in the palace with his father and mother.
Speaker A: Jubil, after he pulled off his hairy coat, was one of the finest young men amongst them and he was the young prince’s closest companion.
Speaker A: The young prince was always very sociable and merry.
Speaker A: Only when he thought of the gold watch he had from the young princess in the castle and which he had lost, he knew not where he passed off many happy days in the forest.
Speaker A: But one day he and poor Jubilee were strolling through the trees when they came to the very spot where they first met and accidentally looking up, he could see his watch hanging in the tree which he had to climb when he first saw poor Jubil coming to him in the form of a bear.
Speaker A: And he cries out, Jubile.
Speaker A: Jubil, I can see my watch up in that tree.
Speaker A: Well, I’m sure.
Speaker A: How lucky?
Speaker A: Exclaimed poor Jubil.
Speaker A: Shall I go and get it down?
Speaker A: No, I’d rather go myself, said the young prince.
Speaker A: Now, whilst all this was going on, the young princess in that castle, saying that one of the King of England’s sons had been there by the changing of the watch and other things, got herself ready with a large army and sailed off for England.
Speaker A: She left her army a little out of the town and she went with her guard straight up to the palace to see the king and also demanded to see his sons.
Speaker A: They had a long conversation together about different things.
Speaker A: At last she demands one of the sons to come before her and the oldest comes when she asks him, have you ever been at the castle of Malvais?
Speaker A: And he answers yes.
Speaker A: She throws down a pocket handkerchief and bids him to walk over it.
Speaker A: Without stumbling he goes to walk over it and no sooner did he put his foot on it then he fell down and broke his leg.
Speaker A: He was taken off immediately and made a prisoner of by her own guards.
Speaker A: The other was called upon and was asked the same questions and I had to go through the same performance and he also was made a prisoner of.
Speaker A: Now she says, have you not another son?
Speaker A: When the king began so to shiver and shake and knock his two knees together that he could scarcely stand upon his legs and did not know what to say to her, he was so much frightened.
Speaker A: At last a thought came to him to send for his headsmen and inquire of him particularly did he behead his son or was he alive?
Speaker A: He has saved O king.
Speaker A: Then bring him here immediately, or else.
Speaker B: I shall be done for.
Speaker A: Two of the fastest horses they had were put in the carriage to go and look for the poor prince.
Speaker A: And when they got to the very spot where they had left him, it was the time when the prince was up the tree getting his watch down, and poor Jubilee standing a distance off, they cried out to him, had he seen another young man in this wood?
Speaker A: Jubil, saying such a nice carriage, thought something, did not like to say no, and said yes and pointed up the tree.
Speaker A: And they told him to come down immediately, as there was a young lady in search of him.
Speaker A: Jubil, did you ever hear such a thing in all your life?
Speaker A: My brother?
Speaker A: Do you call him your brother?
Speaker A: Well, he’s been better to me than my brothers.
Speaker A: Well, for his kindness, he shall accompany you to the palace and see how things turn out.
Speaker A: After they go to the palace, the prince has a good wash and appears before the princess when she asks him had he ever been at the castle of Malva’s.
Speaker A: With a smile upon his face, he gives a graceful bow and says, my lady, walk over that handkerchief without stumbling.
Speaker A: He walks over it many times and dances upon it.
Speaker A: And nothing happened to him.
Speaker A: She said, with a proud and smiling air, that is the young man, and out come the objects exchanged by both of them.
Speaker A: Presently she orders a very large box to be brought in and to be opened, and out comes some of the most costly uniforms that were ever worn on an emperor’s back.
Speaker A: And when he dressed himself up, the king could scarcely look upon him from the dazzling of the gold and diamonds on his coat.
Speaker A: He orders his two brothers to be in confinement for a period of time, and before the princess asks him to go with her to her own country, she pays him a visit to the bear’s camp.
Speaker A: And she makes some very handsome presents for their kindness to the young prince.
Speaker A: And she gives Jubil an invitation to go with them, which he accepts, wishes them a hearty farewell for a while, promising to see them all again in some little time.
Speaker A: They go back to the king and bid farewell and tell him not to be so hasty another time to order people to be beheaded before having a proper cause for it.
Speaker A: Off they go with all their army with them.
Speaker A: But while the soldiers were striking their tents, the prince bethought himself of his Welsh harp and had it sent for immediately to take with him in a beautiful wooden case.
Speaker A: They called to see each of those three brothers whom the prince had to stay with when he was on his way to the castle of Malvales.
Speaker A: And I can assure you, when they all got together, they had a very merry time of it.
Speaker A: And there we will leave them.
Speaker A: Thank you for joining Freya’s fairy tales.
Speaker A: Be sure to come back next week for the conclusion of Jails Journey to holding her own fairy tale in her hands and hear another of her favorite fairy tales.
