Show Notes:
Today is part two of two where we are talking to Emily Michel about her novels. After today you will have heard about winning a contest with your first writing, telling yourself stories, taking 7 years to get your first book to a publishable state, joining groups to help hone your craft, learning as you go what works for you to get your books published and promoted, figuring out that plotting doesn’t work for your creative process, and using books and editing to help calm your brain.
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Emily Michel [pronounced Michael] read her first fairy tale before kindergarten and has been fascinated with speculative fiction of all kinds ever since. She’s traveled the world as a military family member, calling many places in the US and Europe home. She settled in Arizona a few years ago with her husband and kids.
When not writing, Emily reads, walks, crochets, and pets her feline overlords. She has volunteered her time to community organizations for the past twenty years and looks forward to taking a break in 2023 to concentrate on her writing and editing, which is a nice way of saying she’s tired and needs some “me time.” She is occasionally dragged out of the house for something called “socializing.”
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Transcript:
Speaker A: Welcome to Freya’s.
Speaker B: Fairy tales.
Speaker B: We believe fairy tales are both stories we enjoyed as children and something that we can achieve ourselves.
Speaker B: 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 B: At the end of each episode, we will finish off with a fairy tale or short story read as close to the original author’s version as possible.
Speaker B: I am your host.
Speaker B: Freya victoria I’m an audiobook narrator that loves reading fairy tales, novels and bringing stories to life through narration.
Speaker B: I am also fascinated by talking to authors and learning about their why and how for creating their stories.
Speaker B: We have included all of the links for today’s author and our show in the show notes.
Speaker B: Be sure to check out our website and sign up for our newsletter for the latest on the podcast.
Speaker B: Today is part two of two where we are talking to Emily Michael about her novels.
Speaker B: After today, you will have heard about winning a contest with your first writing, telling yourself stories, taking seven years to get your first book to a publishable state, joining groups to help hone your craft, learning as you go.
Speaker B: What works for you to get your books published and promoted, figuring out that plotting doesn’t work for your creative process, and using your books and editing to help calm your brain.
Speaker A: A Memory of Wings an angels and.
Speaker B: Demons Paranormal Romance Memory Duology Book One how far will H***’s top assassin go to save the angel he was sent to kill?
Speaker B: Demon hitman shax craves freedom.
Speaker B: Stuck on earth and bedeviled by his past sins, he drowns the urge to finish his last job with drugs and sex.
Speaker B: Unable to ignore the impulse any longer, Shaq stalks his target and in a split second that will change everything, chooses to spare her life.
Speaker B: Fearless Guardian angel Keoni hates demons, but when an age old enemy protects her from an explosion that kills her friend, she makes a deal with her devil to hunt down the murderer.
Speaker B: Keoni begins to question everything she once knew to be true about good and evil.
Speaker B: Entangled in the events that sealed the gates to Heaven and H***, shax is torn between saving his own skin and his forbidden love for this angel.
Speaker B: And while they discover pieces of a puzzle that may reopen the way home, Keoni struggles to trust her new partner and fights their growing passion.
Speaker B: Will this unholy alliance tear the universe apart?
Speaker B: A Redemption of Wings an Enemies to lovers paranormal Romance Memory Duology Book Two warrior angel demon Assassin will she brave the depths of h*** to save him?
Speaker B: Guardian angel Keoni feels powerless.
Speaker B: She’s lost everything she ever knew and now is trapped in purgatory with the one being she trusts the demons sent to kill her, but saved her instead.
Speaker B: As they search for a way to escape the wretched souls and gloomy monotony of limbo, her desire for the assassin grows to maddening heights.
Speaker B: Shax knows one thing he loves Keoni.
Speaker B: He didn’t dare hope she would return his feelings.
Speaker B: But when their budding relationship takes a passionate turn, he breaks free from an eternity of torment, finally changing.
Speaker B: After all this time, shax vows to become worthy of her.
Speaker B: Keoni can no longer deny her heart, but if she rebuilds the gates to heaven and h*** to save the fabric of the cosmos, she will doom her lover to fiery damnation.
Speaker B: And though Shax is willing to sacrifice his freedom, his life, even his immortal soul, he fears the powerful forces arrayed against them will be his beloved’s ruin.
Speaker B: Can they save all of creation without losing each other?
Speaker C: So what do you think has been the best piece of advice you’ve received and the worst piece of advice you’ve received?
Speaker D: Let’s see, the best piece of advice for me was to try out NaNoWriMo, because that really works for how I do that first draft.
Speaker D: It helps me a lot to just get it out as quickly as possible and then go back and fix it later.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker D: Worst piece of advice?
Speaker D: Oh, goodness, I’m trying to think.
Speaker D: I’ve tried a lot.
Speaker D: I mean, anybody who suggests you sit down and outline extensively before you start writing, it’s just not going to work for how I process stories.
Speaker C: Yeah, it doesn’t work for everybody.
Speaker D: If it works for people, it’s great.
Speaker D: That’s wonderful.
Speaker D: I am so happy for them that they found a process that works for them.
Speaker D: It does not work well for me.
Speaker D: And I think that’s part of what stopped me from writing is because everybody was telling me, you have to outline, you have to outline, and outlining has always been difficult for me and kills the creative process for me.
Speaker D: I know it doesn’t do it for everyone, but it kills me.
Speaker D: And that’s one of the reasons why it took me so long to sit down and realize that I had a story in me and needed to get it out and I didn’t have to outline it in order to tell a story.
Speaker C: So I started one book and I panced it totally for 30,000 words.
Speaker C: There was no planning involved whatsoever.
Speaker C: And then my brain went, OOH, fairy tale retellings.
Speaker C: And I had an idea over Christmas to do one that uses Christmas song titles as the chapter titles.
Speaker C: And so the fairy tale retelling that I’m about 1213 thousand words into now is the Christmas one, obviously, Christmas song titles.
Speaker C: And it is only plotted in so much that I needed to know what song title, what was going to happen in that chapter for the song to make sense with the chapter.
Speaker C: So I have it outlined in what would make sense for a traditional story like, your conflict is going to happen here.
Speaker C: There’s going to be a battle.
Speaker C: So I have the song that’s going to go with the battle.
Speaker C: This is going to happen.
Speaker C: But that’s my entire outline is these maybe five word things about like, this is what’s going to happen in this chapter, and then you got to figure out the rest of it.
Speaker D: Well, and I think that’s where I went wrong with the book two, and my fairy tale retellings is I over outlined.
Speaker C: Okay.
Speaker D: And I was so drawn to stick to the outline that I didn’t chase down the fun things that as a mostly panther through the telling of a story.
Speaker C: Anything could happen in the chapter before you just know, like, this thing happens in the next chapter, so get yourself to that thing.
Speaker D: And I found that, like, beat know, the save the cat or Romancing the beat tend to keep me on track.
Speaker D: So I liken it to a know, you have a road trip from La.
Speaker D: To New York, and a beat sheet will make sure you get to all the places that you want to get to in between the beginning and end and not end up, say, in Saskatchewan or Chihuahua.
Speaker C: We’re going to stop at this landmark in this city that is maybe 510 minutes out the way, but we want to go see it.
Speaker D: And I found that really helped, but I think I gave myself a little too much time to plan this Sleeping Beauty retelling, and I ended up stuck in the outline instead of like, okay, that’s not working.
Speaker D: Let me toss that and go in this direction.
Speaker C: No, but I spent all the time on the outline.
Speaker C: I have to stick to the outline.
Speaker D: I ended up drafting three books within a six month period.
Speaker B: Oh, gosh.
Speaker D: For whatever reason.
Speaker D: I don’t know why, but that’s what happened.
Speaker D: And that Sleeping Beauty book I think I over outlined.
Speaker D: The Cinderella retelling I had was about right.
Speaker D: I gave myself seven days to outline it.
Speaker D: I drafted it in Nanorimo in about 28 days.
Speaker D: I think 27, 28 days.
Speaker D: And then this Santa story, zero planning.
Speaker D: It just was this idea churning around in my head.
Speaker D: I sat down.
Speaker D: I started writing it.
Speaker D: Now as I write, I come up with ideas, and I’ll leave myself notes like, oh, this is what happens in the next chapter, or this has to know the the two thirds mark or whatever.
Speaker D: But as far as sitting down and coming up with character sheets and beat sheets, none of that.
Speaker D: I just sat down and started writing.
Speaker D: And it’s the easiest book I’ve ever written.
Speaker C: So my husband also writes, and he puts way more he has character sheets for each of his characters because his is like, there’s superheroes involved.
Speaker C: And so he’s got like, what superpowers do they have and what does their costume look like?
Speaker C: And things like that so that he can reference it.
Speaker C: It makes sense for his story.
Speaker C: Me, I’m like, riding along, and I’ll be like, Callie is sitting, getting ready for her day she has to pull her blonde hair up in a ponytail, copy and paste blonde hair into the spreadsheet of the character details.
Speaker C: So I remember she has blonde hair later that’s my character sheets is as I’m writing it, it works for everyone.
Speaker C: But then while he’s writing, he has no outline while he’s writing, but then he’ll have a scene pop in his head.
Speaker C: So he’ll do chapter, question mark, question mark, write the scene that’s stuck in his head, and then he goes in and fills in as he gets there.
Speaker C: So kind of like he has it in his head and it won’t go away.
Speaker C: So he has to write that scene just to be able to function and write the rest of the book.
Speaker C: Yes, but he doesn’t know where that’s going to fit into the book until he gets there.
Speaker C: I’m like, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker C: Where me?
Speaker C: I’m like following my plan of song chapters, but my planning session was basically me just listening through the band I knew who had done the most Christmas songs ever was Pentatonix, because every year they release a new Christmas album.
Speaker C: And so I put all of their albums into a playlist on Apple Music.
Speaker C: And I just listened straight through all the songs, all the songs.
Speaker C: And some of them would be like, oh, that song wouldn’t make sense for this book at all.
Speaker C: Throw it out.
Speaker C: We can’t use that one.
Speaker C: But then I’d find these ones and I’m like, oh, that’d work really well for a battle scene.
Speaker C: Or OOH, that’d work really well if she was imprisoned for whatever reason or things that you would see in pretty much every fantasy book ever.
Speaker C: I’m not giving away anything about my story, but it’s like these things.
Speaker C: It’s like, oh, that song would work really well for this, or whatever that was.
Speaker C: My planning session was just listening to a bunch of songs and thinking, like, what could happen in a chapter with this?
Speaker C: Or like, you’d come to let’s see what’s one that I threw out.
Speaker C: It’s a Beauty and the Beast retelling.
Speaker C: So I kept the Grinch song.
Speaker C: Your mean one, Mr.
Speaker C: Grinch.
Speaker C: Because I was like, oh, that’d work really well for the absolutely, obviously.
Speaker C: But then other ones, I can’t even think of ones that I threw out, but there would be like, ones that were too similar of songs.
Speaker C: So I’m like, pick the favorite one.
Speaker C: That was basically my entire planning session was just listening.
Speaker C: And it took me a couple of days because they have a lot of Christmas albums, so it took me several days to listen through them all.
Speaker C: But yeah, and then I went and added the ones that I wanted to a spreadsheet with what could happen in that chapter and then got them in an order that made sense for the acts of a book.
Speaker D: Right.
Speaker C: You can’t have the battle at the beginning.
Speaker C: That would be odd.
Speaker C: You got to introduce the world and all of that.
Speaker C: So you have like deck the halls.
Speaker D: Right, for world building.
Speaker C: World building.
Speaker C: Decorating the house for Christmas time.
Speaker C: It makes sense.
Speaker C: The next book will probably have it won’t be song related.
Speaker C: At least I don’t think it’ll be song related.
Speaker C: I don’t know.
Speaker C: Christmas songs.
Speaker C: You’re not going to get sued for using the song names because how many artists have used those same song names, right?
Speaker C: If you decided to go through, like, Taylor Swift’s entire catalog of music for chapter titles, you might get in trouble.
Speaker C: Will avoid those.
Speaker D: If memory serves, from the research I’ve done, song titles can be trademarked but not copyrighted.
Speaker D: It’s the lyrics that are copyrighted.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker C: Song titles can only be trademarked, though, if it’s like you can’t have a song title with just like a word.
Speaker B: Right?
Speaker C: She has the ones that are like the age that she was.
Speaker D: Right.
Speaker C: I can’t even think of yeah, you can’t do.
Speaker C: Like I have for one of my podcasts, not this one.
Speaker C: I trademarked the name, which is Bite at a Time Books.
Speaker C: And the trademark office was very specific.
Speaker C: Like, I don’t own books that is not mine.
Speaker C: I own books in the context of Byte at a Time books like that grouping of words I own.
Speaker C: Or I’m in the process of them reviewing my application to own.
Speaker C: But they were very specific about the.
Speaker D: Author who a few years ago tried to trademark cocky.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: No, but then there’s like let me think, what’s her face, who owns the Ochre her that’s hot.
Speaker C: Taylor Swift owns like a Bajillion trademarks.
Speaker C: Like she owns a lot.
Speaker D: Some of the Beatles titles are copyrighted.
Speaker C: Like Yellow Submarine you can’t use.
Speaker C: So like ones that are so recognizable.
Speaker C: But there’s a lot of like think how many books have the same names.
Speaker D: Oh, yeah, I just saw a post on TikTok this morning where someone was talking about books she had read that had the same name and which one she preferred out of the two.
Speaker C: Well, I feel like it’s hard because I feel like I’ll be reading and I’ll be like, didn’t I read this book already?
Speaker C: And it’s like, oh, I did, but it was from a different author.
Speaker C: What was the one?
Speaker C: I was just looking one up yesterday and I was like, this is really similar to another book that I read.
Speaker C: Different authors.
Speaker C: I’m like, oh, it’s just similar names.
Speaker C: Different people wrote it, though.
Speaker C: You can’t own a title unless it is so recognizable as yours.
Speaker D: Right?
Speaker C: Like court of thorns and roses.
Speaker C: She could own that because that is whatever.
Speaker C: You also can’t trademark a person’s name unless it is someone so ridiculously.
Speaker C: Like J k.
Speaker C: Rowling is trademarked because hello?
Speaker C: So such a large amount of money tied to that name.
Speaker C: She can own it.
Speaker C: Normal people, you can’t do that anyways.
Speaker D: But you’re right.
Speaker D: Most of the carols and holiday songs are really old and a lot of that has passed the lyrics and stuff on many of them.
Speaker D: Not all of them have passed into public domain.
Speaker C: Well, and at one point in the writing process of this book, I was like, oh, wouldn’t it be cool if I took the lyrics from the songs and wove those into the chapters?
Speaker C: Well, then I ran into trying to weave those into the chapters.
Speaker C: I was like, that sounds really hard.
Speaker C: We’re just going to go and then some of the songs that would have been the cooler ones are not public domain.
Speaker D: Right?
Speaker C: So I’m like, I can get away with the theme of the song.
Speaker C: You can’t trademark a theme.
Speaker C: No, but cannot get away with just like straight up using because I could get away with it, but if anyone ever found out that that’s what I had done, that’s when I would get in trouble, right?
Speaker C: So I stopped doing that because also my brain was like, how do we work all these phrases in?
Speaker C: So there may be the occasional like one of the songs on one of the albums is like, I Just Called to Say I love you.
Speaker C: How many books have that line in them?
Speaker D: Yeah, if it’s a common phrase, you can trademark or copyright particular phrase, but in the context of the larger passage, yes.
Speaker C: It would make sense in a romance fantasy book for someone to call and say that.
Speaker C: I should say mine is half fantasy, half contemporary.
Speaker C: Like it bridges the two worlds.
Speaker D: Contemporary fantasy, that’s what I am writing for my holiday book as well.
Speaker C: Contemporary fantasy I thought was more no, it’s urban fantasy.
Speaker C: I’m thinking where it takes place in our world, but it’s like fantasy creatures, right?
Speaker D: Well, that’s what contemporary fantasy means, that it is set in our world, but it has fantastical or magical element.
Speaker C: No, mine is legitimately.
Speaker C: Half the chapters are in our world and half are in a fantasy world.
Speaker D: Okay.
Speaker C: It is both.
Speaker C: It’ll make sense whenever I finish it.
Speaker C: And it comes out now in the original Beauty and the Beast, like the one that was written in French and all of that.
Speaker C: She is at the Beast’s Castle, right, which we all know from all of the versions, but in her dreams, she’s with the human version of the prince.
Speaker C: And so I took that concept and kind of turned it around a little bit to do that or whatever.
Speaker C: So she in her dreams, like in that book, will be in the fantasy world.
Speaker D: Okay.
Speaker C: And going back and forth.
Speaker B: Of course, she doesn’t know this at.
Speaker C: The beginning because what fun would the book be if she knew that at the beginning?
Speaker D: Very true.
Speaker C: There’s got to be the discovery part of everything.
Speaker C: Book two, she’ll know what’s going on, kind of.
Speaker C: All right.
Speaker C: I don’t know.
Speaker C: Tell me something weird about you that your readers may not know.
Speaker D: Oh, goodness.
Speaker D: Weird?
Speaker D: I don’t know what’s weird.
Speaker D: About me.
Speaker D: I mean, I personally think I am just weird.
Speaker C: What are things that you do that normal?
Speaker C: People don’t?
Speaker D: Tell myself stories at bedtime and think it’s normal.
Speaker C: Fair.
Speaker D: I realize that that makes me at least neurodivergent, if not a writer.
Speaker C: I always kind of knew that my brain worked differently and probably, I don’t know, mid twenty s.
Speaker C: I started finally saying like, well, I don’t know how other people’s brains work, but this is like what mine is doing or whatever.
Speaker C: And it wasn’t until I narrated a book on autism, like high functioning autism, that I was like, that might be it diagnosed?
Speaker C: No.
Speaker C: Do I care to spend the money to get diagnosed also?
Speaker C: No.
Speaker C: But I’m like the awkward things that I do.
Speaker C: I’m like that would kind of explain a lot.
Speaker B: I don’t know.
Speaker C: But the one thing that I know for sure, for sure about me is reading and narrating calms my brain.
Speaker C: It’s not chaotic up there when I’m reading or narrating.
Speaker D: And that’s how I feel with writing and editing, is that the words make sense.
Speaker D: The words help me focus on other things somehow, like process the emotions and build this image in my head that is lovely and calming and feels productive instead of bouncing off the wall worrying about.
Speaker C: So in the last couple of weeks, you were not one of the ones that had to be rescheduled.
Speaker C: But last week I was supposed to have two author interviews that I had to reschedule because I had water leaking from outside of my house into my house walls.
Speaker C: And so last weekend I had to reschedule the interviews because I needed to make sure my sheet rock wasn’t wet and I insanely decided to fix it myself.
Speaker C: Let’s see.
Speaker C: Friday, I took a keyhole saw to my sheet rock inside my house and cut large holes in the walls to try to find where the water is coming from.
Speaker C: Saturday, I spent most of the day spraying a hose at the brick on the outside with my daughter watching inside to see when water started dripping inside.
Speaker C: And then I basically ended up coating all of my mortar between my bricks in concrete to seal the massive cracks that were leaking the water into my house.
Speaker C: But then my brain, we get that fixed on Saturday.
Speaker C: On Sunday we move this nice booth in here into the office, which the wall to my right here butts up to the wall, we fixed.
Speaker C: Okay?
Speaker C: And my brain all week long has been like, but what if we didn’t fix it?
Speaker C: What if?
Speaker C: And then I find out because I’m like, I smell wet sheet rock.
Speaker C: Again.
Speaker C: Of course we can always move this booth around if we need to, but my brain is like, you smell wet sheet rock.
Speaker C: Did it rain that day?
Speaker C: No, it did not rain that day.
Speaker C: How did the sheet rock get wet if it didn’t rain?
Speaker C: Not possible.
Speaker C: So then I’m like googling, like phantom smells.
Speaker C: Apparently anxiety can cause you to imagine smells that makes sense.
Speaker C: I’m like, do we need to pile any more problems on my head?
Speaker D: It has been a week.
Speaker D: Here our air conditioning.
Speaker D: We live in Arizona.
Speaker D: Southern Arizona.
Speaker D: And so it’s pushing 100 and our air conditioning went out and we have an older unit.
Speaker D: And I’m like, this might be it.
Speaker D: Fortunately, it was not it for a few hundred dollars instead of a few thousand dollars.
Speaker C: I’m in Texas, so I understand the heat problems.
Speaker C: That was one of the reasons for this booth.
Speaker C: I have an air conditioner at my feet now that I can not have on during interviews because it is loud.
Speaker C: I did not want to spend three times the amount for the silent unit so it can be turned on between stuff.
Speaker C: I had it blasting before we got on here, so that it got nice and cold.
Speaker C: But yeah, I get a couple of summers ago, same thing happened to us.
Speaker C: We called them out a couple of fix it and then it broke again like a month later.
Speaker C: And they’re like, Listen, you can spend a couple of $100, but your unit is also, like 15 years old, so you’re basically just putting bandaids on it.
Speaker C: I’m like, okay, we’ll pay.
Speaker D: But it was also like the last week of school, so every day was a different schedule.
Speaker D: Yeah, I have high schoolers, so finals or half days.
Speaker D: And then we had two full days, but one of the full days, we start an hour later and I couldn’t get anything done.
Speaker D: And then I accidentally overwrote an editing project I’m working on and lost two days worth of work.
Speaker C: Oh, no.
Speaker D: Please let this be the last gasp of the school year.
Speaker C: Well, that was me getting into the booth, too, because I took, like a week off of Narrating that wasn’t supposed to be off of Narrating.
Speaker C: And I’m like, now I’m having to do time and a half to catch up to myself.
Speaker C: And I’m like, I just need this booth done.
Speaker C: But I did learn last weekend the amazing things I learned last weekend.
Speaker C: One, my husband lifted these big a** walls into place by himself.
Speaker C: Except for the biggest wall section, which is the one behind where my computer is right now.
Speaker C: I did have to help with that one because that one was bigger.
Speaker C: He couldn’t bear hug it.
Speaker C: It was too big.
Speaker C: But I’m like, realistically, we got the box built in a day, less than a day, a couple of hours it took us to get this.
Speaker C: So I’m like, if we have to.
Speaker B: Take it apart, it’s not the end of the world.
Speaker C: Yeah, hard part, I would have to rip the lights the lights do wrap around, so I would have to rip all the lights out for us to move it because it has to come apart.
Speaker C: It’s not on wheels.
Speaker C: That would be really convenient.
Speaker C: But I don’t know that they make wheels to hold, like, 1000 pounds of stuff.
Speaker D: Well, they do, but that might be prohibitive.
Speaker C: I feel like it might make a lot of creaking noises which would not be good for the recording thing.
Speaker D: Right?
Speaker D: Well, and then you would have a gap underneath.
Speaker D: You would probably have at least a small air gap that would also allow a little too much ambient noise in.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: The whole time, my mom’s like, well, why aren’t we just building it?
Speaker C: Why aren’t you just using your own floor?
Speaker C: And I’m like, well, that kind of defeats the purpose of it being mostly soundproofed.
Speaker C: Although I did buy a I have a portable air conditioner which has a tube that’s like, I don’t know, six inches or so.
Speaker C: So I’m like, I did cut a giant hole in the side, but I also needed air conditioning.
Speaker C: So you got to pick your things you’re willing to live with and then you just make it as soundproof as possible.
Speaker B: Anyways.
Speaker C: The things that it doesn’t matter what the job is.
Speaker C: Whether you’re the person writing the book or editing the book or narrating the book whatever the job is, it has to do with the book.
Speaker C: Making the COVID of the book, there are challenges you will run into.
Speaker C: It is how you overcome those to get the end product that you need.
Speaker C: And you hope it costs as little as possible.
Speaker D: That is very true.
Speaker C: All right, well, you have a good rest of your Saturday, and thank you very much.
Speaker C: Good luck on the edits.
Speaker C: I hope that it is not a third of the book that sounds like a nightmare.
Speaker C: Rewriting, all of that, but good luck.
Speaker D: I’ve done it before.
Speaker D: I had one book where I had to rewrite the middle twice.
Speaker D: Yeah, it was a mess.
Speaker D: It was a mess.
Speaker C: I think I had to rewrite about 1000 words of mine.
Speaker C: But it wasn’t, like, total rewrite.
Speaker C: It was like there needed more personality in it.
Speaker C: So I just had to add to it.
Speaker C: Not totally rewrite it.
Speaker C: That’s so far, my only experience.
Speaker C: I need something published to have more experience.
Speaker D: Well, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker C: You have a good rest of your day, and I hope you have a good day too.
Speaker D: All right, bye bye.
Speaker C: Bye.
Speaker B: As Emily got older.
Speaker B: She liked Beauty and the Beast and the Little Mermaid.
Speaker B: Since we’ve already done all versions of these two stories that I can find today we’ll be reading an Andrew Lang story.
Speaker B: He, like the Brothers Grimm, also collected fairy tales including Beauty and the Beast.
Speaker B: Andrew Lang was a Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic and contributor to the field of anthropology.
Speaker A: He is best known as a collector.
Speaker B: Of folk and fairy tales.
Speaker B: The Andrew Lang Lectures at the University of St.
Speaker B: Andrews are named after him.
Speaker B: Today we’ll be reading prince hyacinth and the dear little princess don’t forget we’re reading Lemort de Arthur.
Speaker B: The Story of King Arthur and of.
Speaker A: His noble knights of the roundtable on our Patreon.
Speaker B: You can find the link in the show notes.
Speaker B: Prince Hyacinth and the Dear Little Princess once upon a time there lived a King who was deeply in love with a Princess, but she could not marry anyone because she was under an enchantment.
Speaker B: So the King set out to seek a fairy and ask what he could do to win the Princess’s love.
Speaker B: The Fairy said to him, you know.
Speaker A: That the Princess has a great cat which she is very fond of.
Speaker A: Whoever’s clever enough to tread on that cat’s tail is the man she is destined to marry.
Speaker B: The King said to himself that this would not be very difficult.
Speaker B: And he left the Fairy determined to grind the cat’s tail to powder, rather than not tread on it at all.
Speaker B: You may imagine that it was not long before he went to see the Princess, and Puss, as usual, marched in before him, arching his back.
Speaker B: The King took a long step and quite thought he had the tail under his foot, but the cat turned round so sharply that he only trod on air.
Speaker B: And so it went on for eight days, till the King began to think that this fatal tail must be full of quicksilver.
Speaker B: It was never still for a moment.
Speaker B: At last, however, he was lucky enough to come upon the puss fast asleep and with his tail conveniently spread out.
Speaker B: So the King, without losing a moment, set his foot upon it heavily.
Speaker B: With one terrific yell, the cat sprang up and instantly changed into a tall man, who, fixing his angry eyes upon the King, said you shall marry the.
Speaker C: Princess because you’ve been able to break.
Speaker B: The enchantment, but I will have my revenge.
Speaker B: You shall have a son who will never be happy until he finds out that his nose is too long.
Speaker B: And if you ever tell anyone what I’ve just said to you, you shall vanish away instantly and no one shall ever see you or hear of you again.
Speaker B: The King was horribly afraid of the enchanter.
Speaker B: He could not help laughing at this threat.
Speaker B: If my son has such a long nose as that, he said to himself, he must always see it or feel it at least if he is not blind or without hands.
Speaker B: But as the enchanter had vanished, he did not waste any more time in thinking, but went to seek the Princess, who very soon consented to marry him.
Speaker B: But after all, they had not been married very long when the King died, and the Queen had nothing left to care for but her little son, who was called Hyacinth.
Speaker B: The little Prince had large blue eyes, the prettiest eyes in the world, and a sweet little mouth, but, alas, his nose was so enormous that it covered half his face.
Speaker B: The queen was inconsolable.
Speaker C: When?
Speaker B: She saw this great nose, but her ladies assured her that it was not really as large as it looked, that it was a Roman nose, and you had only to open any history to see that every hero has a large nose.
Speaker B: The queen, who was devoted to her baby, was pleased with what they told her, and when she looked at Hyacinth again, his nose certainly did not seem to her quite so large.
Speaker B: The prince was brought up with great care, and as soon as he could speak they told him all sorts of dreadful stories about people who had short noses.
Speaker B: No one was allowed to come near him whose nose did not more or less resemble his own.
Speaker B: And the courtiers, to get into favor with the queen, took to pulling their baby’s noses several times every day to make them grow long, but do what they would.
Speaker B: They were nothing by comparison with the princes.
Speaker B: When he grew sensible, he learned history, and whenever any great prince or beautiful princess was spoken of, his teachers took care to tell him that they had long noses.
Speaker B: His room was hung with pictures all of people with very large noses.
Speaker B: And the prince grew up so convinced that a long nose was a great beauty that he would not on any account have had his own a single inch shorter.
Speaker B: When his 20th birthday was passed, the queen thought it was time that he should be married, so she commanded that the portraits of several princesses should be brought for him to see, and among others was a picture of the dear little princess.
Speaker B: Now she was the daughter of a great king and would someday possess several kingdoms herself, but Prince Hyacinth had not a thought to spare for anything of that sort.
Speaker B: He was so much struck with her beauty.
Speaker B: The princess, whom he thought quite charming, had, however, a little saucy nose, which in her face was the prettiest thing possible.
Speaker B: But it was a cause of great embarrassment to the courtiers, who had got into such a habit of laughing at little noses that they sometimes found themselves laughing at hers before they had time to think.
Speaker B: But this did not do at all before the prince, who quite failed to see the joke and actually banished two of his courtiers, who had dared to mention disrespectfully the dear little princess’s tiny nose.
Speaker B: The others, taking warning from this, learned to think twice before they spoke.
Speaker B: And one even went so far as to tell the Prince that though it was quite true that no man could be worth anything unless he had a long nose.
Speaker B: Still, a woman’s beauty was a different thing.
Speaker B: And he knew a learned man who understood Greek and had read in some old manuscripts that the beautiful Cleopatra herself had a tip tilted nose.
Speaker B: The prince made him a splendid present as a reward for this good news, and at once sent ambassadors to ask the dear little princess in marriage.
Speaker B: The king, her father gave his consent, and Prince Hyacinth, who in his anxiety to see the princess had gone three leagues to meet her, was just advancing to kiss her hand, when to the horror of all who stood by the enchanter appeared as suddenly as a flash of lightning, and snatching up the dear little princess, whirled her away.
Speaker B: Out of their sight.
Speaker B: The prince was left quite unconsoloable, and declared that nothing should induce him to go back to his kingdom until he had found her again.
Speaker B: And refusing to allow any of his courtiers to follow him, he mounted his horse and rode sadly away, letting the animal choose his own path.
Speaker B: So it happened that he came presently to a great plain, across which he rode all day long without seeing a single house, and horse and rider were terribly hungry.
Speaker B: When, as the night fell, the prince caught sight of a light which seemed to shine from a cavern, he rode up to it and saw a little old woman who appeared to be at least a hundred years old.
Speaker B: She put on her spectacles to look at Prince Hyacinth, but it was quite a long time before she could fix them securely, because her nose was so very short.
Speaker B: The prince and the fairy, for that was who she was, had no sooner looked at one another than they went into fits of laughter and cried at the same moment.
Speaker B: Oh, what a funny nose.
Speaker B: Not so funny as your own, said Prince Hyacinth to the fairy.
Speaker B: But, madame, I beg you to leave the consideration of our noses, such as they are, and to be good enough to give me something to eat, for I am starving, and so is my poor horse.
Speaker B: With all my heart, said the fairy.
Speaker A: Though your nose is so ridiculous, you are nevertheless the son of my best friend.
Speaker B: I loved your father as if he.
Speaker A: Had been my brother.
Speaker A: Now he had a very handsome nose.
Speaker B: And pray, what does mine lack?
Speaker B: Said the prince.
Speaker A: Oh, it doesn’t lack anything, replied the fairy.
Speaker A: On the contrary, quite.
Speaker A: There is only too much of it.
Speaker A: But never mind.
Speaker A: 1 may be a very worthy man, though his nose is too long.
Speaker A: I was telling you that I was your father’s friend.
Speaker A: He often came to see me in the old times, and you must know that I was very pretty in those days.
Speaker A: At least he used to say so.
Speaker A: I should like to tell you of a conversation we had the last time.
Speaker B: I ever saw him.
Speaker B: Indeed?
Speaker B: Said the prince.
Speaker B: When I have supped, it will give me the greatest pleasure to hear it.
Speaker B: But consider, madam, I beg of you that I have had nothing to eat today.
Speaker B: The poor boy is right, said the fairy.
Speaker A: I was forgetting.
Speaker A: Come in, then, and I will give you some supper.
Speaker A: And while you were eating, I can tell you my story in a very few words, for I don’t like endless tales myself.
Speaker A: Too long a tongue is worse than too long a nose, and I remember when I was young that I was so much admired for not being a great chatterer.
Speaker A: They used to tell the Queen, my mother, that it was so, for though you see what I am now, I.
Speaker B: Was the daughter of a great king.
Speaker B: My father your father, I dare say, got something to eat when he was hungry, interrupted the prince.
Speaker A: Oh, certainly, answered the fairy, and you also shall have supper directly.
Speaker A: I only just wanted to tell you.
Speaker B: But I really cannot listen to anything until I’ve had something to eat.
Speaker B: Cried the prince, who was getting quite angry.
Speaker B: But then, remembering that he had better be polite, as he much needed the fairy’s help, he added I know that in the pleasure of listening to you I should quite forget my own hunger, but my horse, who cannot hear you, must really be fed.
Speaker B: The fairy was very much flattered by this compliment, and said, calling to her.
Speaker A: Servants, you shall not wait another minute.
Speaker A: You are so polite, and in spite of the enormous size of your nose, you are really very agreeable.
Speaker C: Plague.
Speaker B: Take the old lady.
Speaker B: How she does go on about my nose, said the prince to himself.
Speaker B: One would almost think that mine had taken all the extra length that hers lacks.
Speaker B: If I were not so hungry, I would soon have done with this chatter pie who thinks she talks very little.
Speaker B: How stupid people are not to see their own faults that comes of being a princess.
Speaker B: She has been spoiled by flatterers who have made her believe that she is quite a moderate talker.
Speaker B: Meanwhile, the servants were putting the supper on the table, and the prince was much amused to hear the fairy, who asked them a thousand questions simply for the pleasure of hearing herself speak.
Speaker B: Especially he noticed one maid who, no matter what was being said, always contrived to praise her mistress’s wisdom.
Speaker B: Well, he thought, as he ate his supper, I’m very glad I came here.
Speaker B: This just shows me how sensible I have been in never listening to flatterers.
Speaker B: People of that sort praise us to our faces without shame and hide our faults or change them into virtues.
Speaker B: For my part, I never will be taken in by them.
Speaker B: I know my own defects.
Speaker B: I hope.
Speaker B: Poor Prince Hyacinth.
Speaker B: He really believed what he said, and hadn’t an idea that the people who had praised his nose were laughing at him, just as the fairies maid was laughing at her, for the prince had seen her laugh slyly when she could do so without the fairies noticing her.
Speaker B: However, he said nothing, and presently, when his hunger began to be appeased, the.
Speaker A: Fairy said, my dear prince, might I beg you to move a little more that way, for your nose casts such a shadow that I really cannot see what I have on my plate.
Speaker A: Ah, thanks.
Speaker A: Now let us speak of your father.
Speaker A: When I went to his court, he was only a little boy, but that is 40 years ago, and I’ve been in this desolate place ever since.
Speaker A: Tell me, what goes on nowadays?
Speaker A: Are the ladies as fond of amusement as ever?
Speaker A: In my time one saw them at parties, theaters, balls and promenades every day.
Speaker A: Dear me, what a long nose you have.
Speaker B: I cannot get used to it.
Speaker B: Really, madam, said the prince, I wish you would leave off mentioning my nose.
Speaker B: It cannot matter to you what it is like.
Speaker B: I am quite satisfied with it, and have no wish to have it shorter.
Speaker B: One must take what is given one.
Speaker A: Now you are angry with me, my poor hyacinth, said the fairy, and I assure you that I didn’t mean to vex you.
Speaker A: On the contrary, I wish to do you a service.
Speaker A: However, though I really cannot help your nose being a shock to me, I will try not to say anything about it.
Speaker A: I will even try to think that you have an ordinary nose.
Speaker A: To tell the truth, it would make three reasonable ones.
Speaker B: The prince, who was no longer hungry, grew so impatient at the fairy’s continual remarks about his nose that at last he threw himself upon his horse and rode hastily away.
Speaker B: But wherever he came in his journeyings, he thought the people were mad, for they all talked of his nose.
Speaker B: And yet he could not bring himself to admit that it was too long.
Speaker B: He had been so used all his life to hear it called handsome.
Speaker B: The old fairy, who wished to make him happy, at last hit upon a plan.
Speaker B: She shut the dear little princess up in a palace of crystal, and put this palace down where the prince would not fail to find it.
Speaker B: His joy at seeing the princess again was extreme, and he set to work with all his might to try to break her prison.
Speaker B: But in spite of all his efforts, he failed utterly.
Speaker B: In despair.
Speaker B: He thought at least that he would try to get near enough to speak to the dear little princess, who on her part stretched out her hand, that he might kiss it materne which way he might.
Speaker B: He never could raise it to his lips, for his long nose always prevented it.
Speaker C: For the first time he realized how.
Speaker B: Long it really was and exclaimed, well, it must be admitted that my nose is too long.
Speaker B: In an instant the crystal prison flew into a thousand splinters, and the old fairy, taking the dear little princess by the hand, said to the prince, now.
Speaker A: Say, if you are not very much obliged to me, much good it was for me to talk to you about your nose.
Speaker A: You would never have found out how extraordinary it was if it hadn’t hindered you from doing what you wanted to.
Speaker A: You see how self love keeps us from knowing our own defects of mind and body.
Speaker A: Our reason tries in vain to show them to us.
Speaker A: We refuse to see them till we find them in the way of our interests.
Speaker B: Prince Hyacinth, whose nose was now just like anybody else’s, did not fail to profit by the lesson he had received.
Speaker B: He married the dear little princess, and they lived happily ever after.
Speaker B: Thank you for joining Freya’s fairy tales.
Speaker B: Be sure to come back next week for Bridget’s journey to holding her own fairy tale in her hands and to hear one of her favorite fairy tales.
