Fairytale of New York: Download Your Happily Ever After

     If you follow my blog, you might know that I’m a sucker for a good happy ending. And for me, what comes to mind first when I think of those happily ever after moments? Fairy tales. What a wonderful surprise I came across today, then, when I opened up my Twitter page to find that Miranda Dickinson’s debut novel, Fairytale of New York is now available for FREE (no catch!) on select e-book websites.

     My personal favorite ebook site where I’ve found it and it's easy to read the books on my desktop or upload to my iPod Touch is Kobo Books.

     Read more about Miranda Dickinson on her web page at www.miranda-dickinson.com, follow her on her blog at http://www.coffeeandroses.blogspot.com/. Finally,catch the reviews on this and Miranda Dickinson's other novels a two more of my personal favorite web sites:

Goodreads:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6649757-fairytale-of-new-york

The Chick Lit Club:

http://chicklitclub.com/authorsd.html#mirandadickinson

The Wickedly Wicked Life of Women: From Classic Lit to Chick Lit

     While I’ve been working on a novel for NaNoWriMO, I’ve found myself doing research on evil mothers and evil women, in general in literature. What is it about fairy tales, fiction and chick lit that readers love a good female villain? Some people call them strong, diabolical or jealous and probably, most recently, “bitch” captures all these words into one modern meaning of the femme fatale. Just for fun, I thought I’d compile a liset of all the Evil Women who we love to hate (and some we’ve even grown to love) from Grimm’s Fairy Tales to contemporary Chick Lit:

Wicked Witch of the West - The Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum

The Stepmother – Hansel & Gretel; Cinderella; Snow White all by Brothers Grimm

Maleficient – Sleeping Beauty by Phillip Margolin

Lady MacBeth – MacBeth by William Shakespeare

Goneril & Regan – King Lear by William Shakespeare

Nurse Ratched – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

Corinne Dollanganger – Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews

Cruella de Vil ¬– 101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith

Queen of Hearts – Alice in Wonderland ¬by Lewis Carroll

Miss Trunchbull – Matilda by Roald Dahl

Miranda Priestley – The Devil Wears of Prada by Lauren Weisberger*

Vivian Grant – Because She Can by Bridie Clark*

Mrs. X –The Nanny Diaries & The Nanny Returns by Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Kraus*

Sidra DeSimon – How to Sleep with a Movie Star by Kristin Harmel*

*Chick Lit “Evil at Work” characters adapted from the Chick Lit Club, Retrieved at http://chicklitclub.com/top10evilatwork.html on November 19, 2010

     Fascinated by the concept of the evil female villain, myself, I am working on adding my own femme fatale to the growing list of chick lit antagonists. Taking key components from many varieties of the story of Cinderella and modern elements of chick lit and contemporary fiction, I hope one day Ms. Marguerite of The Cinderella Complex will one day make it on one of the lists. She is an evil woman, not unlike the evil stepmothers of preceding literature who antagonizes my leading heroine at every step of her journey to independence.

Who did I forget? Let me know. I’d love to hear it! Post your favorite evil women from chick lit or anywhere in the media.

Star Book Review: Sammi Ever After by Soma Helmi

First time author, Soma Helmi, wrote a fictional home-run with her debut novel, Sammi Ever After. True to the traditional format of Chick Lit novels, Sammi Ever After has readers follow one woman on her journey in search of self. When girl meets boy and they fall in love, it seems like everything is going to be happily ever after, but all too soon, he dumps her. To make matters worse, he leaves her stranded at an airport in a foreign country, in which she has no job and no place to live. Luckily, she has one true friend in the area who lets her cry and sulk on his couch for weeks on end, that is of course, until his girlfriend decides it’s time for Sammi to move on. Finally having to face the dilemma of starting over in a new city on her own, Sammi is determined to “fake it til she makes it”.

Find out what “happily ever after” means to Sammi as she travels from Indonesia to Australia to London to the Islands of Greece and then back to London in a story full of romance, friendship and travel. Join in as Sammi seeks out her own fairytale ending and story is and along the way much hilarity and humility ensue. One of the bits I absolutely adored in this novel was at the beginning when Sammi goes to dinner with Liam at the Red Lion. As her dish of chicken dinner comes out, Sammi reaches in her bag for Sambal, a sauce she never leaves home without. I imagine it must be the Indonesian version of Tabasco sauce. Little details like that can tell you so much about a character and I thought it was such a wonderful trait to add to Sammi’s character to make her a unique and unforgettable heroine.

Native Indonesian and first-time author, Soma Helmi, may already be established as a filmmaker, art director and graphic artist but I predict it won’t be long before she adds “acclaimed women’s fiction novelist” to her ongoing list of credits.

**Follow Soma Helmi on Goodreads!!

                                                                STAR RATING: 3 STARS

Welcome

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to my first web page: Where You Wish Upon A Star. It's been my dream for a long time, since I can ever remember, to write professionally one day. I wanted to write a biography, mystery and women's fiction novel. As a child, I used to write "creative stories" in a spiral notebook. When I went to camp, my friend Susie and I decided that our ghost writer names should be Last Initial, First Initial, Middle Name, and so the author H.C. Grace was born. I wrote everything. Stories about swimming and tennis and shopping. Mysteries about ghosts, villains and vampires. I read all the time, my earliest favorites being Judy Blume, Roald Dahl and Beverly Cleary. I also led a very active lifestyle, playing sports, neighborhood games, role play and make-believe. I had plenty of inspiration to draw upon.

When I was really young, my favorite stories were fairy tales, from the Brothers Grimm and Hans Anderson to Walt Disney. Now that I'm an adult, I'm well aware that life is not ever going to be like those fairy tales, sometimes a little too painfully aware, but it doesn't mean I can't still love, embrace and reiterate them. In fact, a lot of them have so many hidden meanings and messages in them that no child could possibly even contemplate, let alone understand. And so this is where I drew inspiration for my first web page, Where You Wish Upon A Star. It is where I can bring reality to my dreams, and please, feel free to share yours with me, too.

To put truth to one of my first dreams, the craft of writing, I have been getting back into the habit I maintained as a child of writing every day. My goal is to write a first draft of a full-length novel by the end of 2010. I have gotten so far as to write an outline, a brief summary, various character sketches and chapter one. I began writing the draft of this novel (To Be Titled) with a basic premise and storyline that i kept in my mind (and on scrap pieces of paper, sticky notes, loose leaf paper and many, many computer files). One day, after I finished reading a women's fiction/chick lit book and closed it with a smile on my face (as I so often do), I started to think more intently, "How can I write a book like this that leaves the reader so satisfied and happy? Sad that the story is over but satiated with the depth of its characters and plot?" and then it hit me. "Why not turn my novel from something I like into something I love?" Using the basic premise of the classic story of Sleeping Beauty, I decided to rework my outline to become a modern fairy tale. And what better place to share the day by day progress of my novel, to show the transformation of an idea into reality than "Where You Wish Upon A Star"?

To everyone out there who ever believed in wishing on stars, please share your dreams and how you are working on turning them into reality with me here and thank you for letting me share mine.