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Emerald Bound is a dark YA retelling
of the fairy tale The Princess and the Pea. Here’s the book blurb:
A princess, a pea, and a tower of
mattresses. This is the sliver that survives of a story more nightmare than
fairy tale.
Maggie Rhodes, high school junior and
semi-reformed stalker, learns the tale’s true roots after a spying attempt goes
awry and her best friend Kate ends up as the victim of an ancient curse. At the
center of the curse lies an enchanted emerald that has been residing quietly in
a museum for the past fifty years. Admirers of the gem have no idea that it
feeds on life. Or that it’s found its next victim in Kate.
Enter Lindy, a school acquaintance
who knows more than she’s letting on, and Garon, a handsome stranger claiming
he knows how to help, and Maggie is left wondering who to trust and how to save
her best friend before it’s too late.
If only Maggie knew her connection to
the fairy tale was rooted far deeper than an endangered best friend.
**What is this book’s genre? Is this the genre you usually write in? Are there any genre’s you haven’t written
that you’d like to try?
Emerald Bound is YA fantasy/magical
realism. Most of my stuff is YA, but a year or so ago my writing group
convinced me to branch out and write a zombie story to contribute to their
zombie anthology geared toward adults. That was new for me. I love to read
historical fiction and I’ve always wanted to give it a try, but I’m really bad
at history so that may never happen. My books are best when the details come
from my imagination, not from a history book.
**What inspired you to
write this book?
I’ve always loved fairytale twists,
but there are some tales that are done over and over and some that are
completely overlooked. I started thinking about The Princess and the Pea and
wondered what it would be like if the Pea was actually an enchanted emerald,
created to steal life from the unlucky maiden sleeping above it. There would
have to be a curse. There would have to be some kind of magic. And there would
have to be a handsome prince. But what if everything else went completely
against the rules? That’s how Emerald Bound was born.
**How did you pick its
title? Did it come first or did you have to write the story first?
The original title was The Emerald
Binding, which I changed early on to Emerald Bound. I played around with some
variations that made it more clear this was a Princess and the Pea retelling,
but they were all pretty lame. Even though I had the title early on, the story
still came first in my mind.
**How did you create your
characters? Did you use any real life
people in their making?
I didn’t plan these characters out
too rigidly before I began writing. I knew who I wanted them to become and
where they were starting out from and I let the details and their personality
quirks evolve from there. It’s a good thing, too, because one of my favorite
characters popped onto the scene without me even knowing he was going to. I
could never have planned him out the way he came—he just showed up on the page
this way.
**Who is your favorite
character of this book and why?
I like both of my leading ladies,
Maggie and Lindy, but my very favorite character is Garon. As I said in the
previous question, Garon arrived on the scene without permission or previous
planning from me. Maggie was running around a corner, and suddenly, there he
was. I knew the second he stepped onto the stage of my mind that he was going
to stay. He’s charming, clever, and ruggedly handsome. He’s also a little bit
awkward—adorably so—because … oh wait, I don’t want to spoil anything. Let’s
just say he’s adorably awkward for good reason and leave it at that.
**What is your favorite
part of this book? Can you share an
excerpt from that part?
My favorite part is probably the end,
but since I don’t want to give anything away, I’ll tell you about another part
that was fun to write. In this part, we see Calista, the villain, after she’s
dropped her sugar-coated pretenses:
My frantic banging did the trick. I
heard the metallic grate of a key in the lock. There was a click, a turning
knob, and the door swung inward. Calista’s eyes went impossibly wide when she
saw me standing there, locked inside her room full of precious gems. But then a
wicked grin lit up her face. She licked her lips.
“Theo,” she called, her voice
dripping with sugar-coated disdain. Her eyes stayed locked on mine. One hand
shot out and grabbed me by the wrist. “Our guest has returned.”
She pulled me roughly to the wood
paneled room I’d poked my head into earlier. Theo joined us a moment later.
Taking me by both wrists, Calista murmured something in another language (Latin
maybe? Or was it more sing-songy?) while forcing me into the lone chair in the
center of the room. When she let go, my arms were stuck to the armrests. My
feet felt like they’d been set in concrete on the floor.
My stomach groused, roaring in
protest. And I still had to pee.
Calista’s ice-gray eyes gleamed as
she stepped back to survey her handiwork. Oddly, she was dressed just like I’d
pictured her: in another evening gown, silver this time. On the surface, she
looked the same as she had the previous night, but the overall effect had
changed. The straightness of her spine now seemed imposing, not sophisticated.
The twist of her features was no longer elegant, but like a coiled up snake. I
didn’t know if I was seeing her through new eyes or if she’d taken off some
kind of mask.
Her slender fingers came together in
front of her. “Since you’re here, perhaps you’d like to explain why you and
your friend left early last night? We were so looking forward to … receiving
you in the morning.”
I struggled in vain against the
invisible force that held me bound to the chair. “Where’s Kate?” I demanded, ignoring
her question and setting my jaw.
“Sorry, dear, but you won’t be seeing
your friend again.” Calista smirked at me. Her black dangly earrings brushed
her collarbone as she spoke. “She is, shall we say, no more.”
“What did you do to her? Kate’s
family will call the police, you know. Piper knew we were here last night.”
Calista chuckled and clucked her
tongue, making me feel like a two-year-old insisting on having dessert before
dinner.
“Ah, child. Such passion. You don’t
seem to understand, though. Your friend no longer exists. Which means, nobody
remembers her and nobody will come looking for her.” She cocked her head.
“Except for you, apparently. Tell me, how did you escape last night?”
“Escape?” My voice rose. “I thought
we were guests, not prisoners.”
Her eyebrows shot up and she laughed,
genuinely amused. “Yes, perhaps I should have made that more clear. You were
not guests. You were trespassers. Naturally, I neglected to specify the terms
of your overnight stay. If I had, you never would have agreed to it. But no
matter. We’ll try again tonight.”
**What was the hardest
part of this book to write? Can you share an excerpt from that part?
Probably the hardest part to write
was also one of the most fun parts. It was hard to write because I wanted to make
sure I had all the details correct, but it was fun because I was taking all the
wacky stuff I’d imagined and putting it into concrete, explainable terms. I am
definitely not an expert in Chemistry. But Garon is, and that’s how he does his
magic. (As a side note, one of my writing critique partners is a Chemistry
expert as well, and I made sure she approved of what I’d written on the
subject.) Here’s the bit where Garon is teaching Maggie about how he uses
chemistry to do magic:
Garon interrupted my internal
rambling. “Okay, it’s time to talk. You’d better pull over.”
My inner monologue screeched to a
halt and I looked at him for longer than I should have, considering I was
behind the wheel going seventy miles an hour. This sounded serious. I pulled
off the two-lane highway that connected my hometown to civilization, parking in
the shady corner of a mostly empty grocery store parking lot.
Once we were safely immobile, he
swiveled in his seat, calming me once again with his hot-cocoa eyes. “Okay,
first I’m going to teach you a little trick. So you’ll understand what I was
saying earlier about accessing magic through a knowledge of science. This is
the first bit of so-called magic I ever learned. And it’s how Olivian was
created.
I perked up. He was going to show me
how the magical emerald that held my friend captive was created? I cut the
engine and set my keys into the cup holder.
Garon reached into his pocket and
pulled out his Washington DC souvenir keychain. He worked on it for a moment,
separating the decorative part from the chain and ring part. He set the chain
and ring aside and held up the part stamped with the White House. “See this?
Most metal keychains, this one included, are made out of stainless steel
because it holds up well against the elements and is rust-resistant. Stainless
steel is a metal alloy made up of iron, chromium, nickel, and manganese.”
I tried to keep up, frantically
searching my brain for the stuff I’d crammed into it in Chem class last year.
Garon pressed the disk into his palm,
where it fit nicely, and closed his fingers around it. The lines of his face
became serious, but his eyes danced with obvious excitement. “Now, before doing
anything else, we have to visualize the elements that make this metal. I must
see them in my mind’s eye. So clearly I could trace them.” He reached out with
a finger and drew on the fogging up window.
He drew a row of circles. Underneath
it, he drew another row, starting slightly to the right of where the first one
began. He drew a third, and then a fourth. Each row began slightly to the right
of the one above it, so together they formed a diamond shape. No … a
parallelogram. (SAT points in geometry now!)
Garon pointed to the circles. “These
are iron atoms.” Then he drew tiny circles in the spaces between the larger
circles, and finally, lines linking everything together. “There’s a carbon atom
inside each cube of iron, and bonds hold it all together.”
I stared at the diagram, my head
swimming. I hadn’t had enough sleep for this.
He continued. “When you can see the
atomic structure in your head, as clearly as if it were suspended in midair
before you, you can change it at will by reaching in with your mind. For
example, you could exchange the elements, one at a time, until you’ve turned
the metal into something else entirely. In our case, we only want to weaken the
atomic structure, not change it. So we just need to add entropy until the bonds
become malleable.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“In other words, we have to spread
apart the atoms by making them move around.” Garon poked the diagram he’d drawn
on the windshield. The glass didn’t give way, obviously, but I understood what
he meant. If he nudged them, they would knock into each other and spread apart.
“Here, I’ll show you.” Garon closed
his eyes again and focused on his fist, squeezing tightly. His brow furrowed
and his lips tightened. He stayed that way for what felt like several minutes.
I spent the time studying his face, his hair, his lips, his hands. He had good
hands.
Soon his face relaxed and his fingers
opened. A shimmery, bendy, silver thing rested in his palm. It wiggled. He held
it up and I saw that it was the keychain, only, it wasn’t. It now looked like a
silver disk of Jell-O.
Oh, wow. Wow! I peered closer, my
heart beating way too fast. How had he done that? Okay, technically he’d just
told me how but still, how? I reached out a shaky finger to touch the silver
mass in his palm. It gave way where my finger pressed into it, then bounced
back when I pulled away.
“See?” He grinned at me. “All you
need to do is prod the atoms a bit, in your minds’ eye, of course, and they’ll
move around. That weakens the structure and makes the metal pliable. You try.
Oh, just make sure to prod gently or the structure will fall apart completely.”
I laughed. Hard. “Yeah, right! I
barely understood a word you just said! I can’t do it! There’s no way.”
He shrugged, squeezing his fist again
and opening it to reveal the keychain, hardened once again. “With enough
practice you could.” He stuffed the disk back into his pocket and glanced at me
sideways, his eyebrows raised as if in challenge.
I didn’t think I could do it, but my
curiosity was piqued. And I couldn’t back down from the subtle dare. I fished
out my own keychain from my pocket and held it in my fist like he had. His
diagrams were still on the window, but fading. He refreshed them with his
finger so I could study them. Then I closed my eyes, focusing on the disk in my
palm. I pictured it, saw the elements, and drew the diagram in my mind. When I
was sure all the details were right, I poked, gently, just as he’d said to, to
get the atoms moving. In my minds’ eye, I saw them jiggle. Then they jumped,
crashing into each other with increasing intensity. I visualized the metal
turning to putty in my hands. Smiling, I opened my eyes and relaxed my fingers.
A hard, metal keychain rested on my
palm. It hadn’t changed at all. A twinge of disappointment tickled my chest. I
sniffed, jutting out my chin when Garon peeked into my hand. “See? I can’t do
it.”
“Well, now you have something to
practice.”
**Did you have any
special rhythm or quirks while writing this?
I have to write in complete silence.
Or, in the absence of silence, white noise works as well (and by “white noise”
I mean the clamor of my house when all five of my kids are home). I have a
really hard time writing to music or with the TV on. Or even in Starbucks since
I can usually overhear conversations going on around me. That environment is
great for picking up new ideas but horrible for executing the ones I already
have.
**Is this a stand-alone
book or is it part of a series? If so,
we want to hear about it and what’s next in the series. If not a series, what comes next to be
released?
I’m not a fan of cliff-hangers at the
end of books, so I made sure to tie everything up in the end of Emerald Bound.
But I also wanted the opportunity to delve further into the world, so I did
leave an opening for myself to do that. I’m planning to have two more books
follow Emerald Bound, and each will take another little-known fairy tale and
turn it on its head. Gemstones will definitely be involved. Both books have
been plotted out, but that’s about as far as I’ve taken them. Right now I’m
working on finishing a YA contemporary suspense novel called Windfall that I
started when I began querying Emerald Bound.
* * * * *
Emerald
Bound
Teresa Richards
Fantasy, Romance,
Suspense
Evernight Teen Publishing ~ 83,000
words
Editor's Pick
A princess, a pea, and a tower of
mattresses. This is the sliver that survives of a story more nightmare than
fairytale...
Maggie Rhodes, high school junior and
semi-reformed stalker, learns the tale’s true roots after a spying attempt goes
awry and her best friend Kate ends up as the victim of an ancient curse. At the
center of the curse lies an enchanted emerald that has been residing quietly in
a museum for the past fifty years.
Admirers of the gem have no idea that it
feeds on life. Or that it’s found its next victim in Kate.
Enter
Lindy, a school acquaintance who knows more than she’s letting on, and Garon, a
handsome stranger claiming he knows how to help, and Maggie is left wondering
who to trust and how to save her best friend before it’s too late.
If
only Maggie knew her connection to the fairy tale was rooted far deeper than an
endangered best friend.
Follow along with the tour HERE
Excerpt:
A part of me died
long ago.
It was the part of me
that feels, and it was Calista’s fault.
What happened tonight
was nothing new—innocent victims welcomed into our home, not knowing they would
never leave. I learned long ago I could not help them, so I stopped trying.
But this time
something was different. This time I was awake, burning with a gut-wrenching
guilt, as the next victims slept downstairs. This time I knew the victims. And
they didn’t deserve what was coming.
It had always been
hard for me to make friends. I’d been called loner, loser, outcast, and freak.
Even still, I remembered Maggie offering to show me around when I first
transferred to their school. Through her, I met Kate and Piper. The three of
them were always nice to me, while other kids kept their distance and spread
rumors behind my back. I told myself I didn’t care—I wasn’t like them.
But being a loner was
lonely.
So tonight when I saw
Maggie and her friends here, something inside me snapped. Or, perhaps it was
the dead piece of me coming back to life. Now I cared desperately about what
was happening in the room below mine.
But there was still
nothing I could do.
Calista usually lured
in victims from out of town to avoid arousing suspicion. Pregnant ones were a
particular favorite—easy prey, she called them. But Maggie and her friends came
here all on their own. The opportunity was too good for Calista to pass up.
Everyone thought
Calista was my mother, but she wasn’t.
Back in my day,
almost four centuries ago, Calista had an alternate method of luring in
victims. She and her husband, Theodore, advertised for hired help with their
inn. The number of parents willing to sell their daughters into a life of
servitude in exchange for a forgiven debt or a clean slate was staggering.
My father was one of
them.
By the time my mother
found out what he’d done, it was too late. There was no escape. I was bound.
My story was well
known in this land, whispered as a bedtime tale to ease children into sleep.
But, just like any other story passed down through time by rumors and idle
gossip, the fragment that survived was woefully incomplete. It began something
like this:
There is rumored to
have been (once upon a time, of course) a princess, a pea, and a tower of
mattresses.
That much was true,
though in actuality it was only one mattress, not twenty. The pea was also
real, though most would call it a precious stone—an emerald, to be precise.
The gem that sealed
my fate was now in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C.
Calista was furious when she found it missing. She thought I’d stolen it until
she remembered my limits. The identity of the true thief remains unknown.
Even though the
emerald is no longer in our possession, we are still bound to it, as it is
bound to us. Admirers of the opulent necklace where it rests don’t understand
it. Like me, the gem is a prisoner, struggling against its fate.
Even now, centuries
later, I don’t understand all the details of what happened to me that night.
But it began with a troubled slumber on a bed of enchanted emeralds.
About the Author:
Teresa Richards writes YA, but loves anything that can be
given a unique twist. Her zombie stories 'Are You My Mombie?' and 'The Zombie Code'
can be found in Z Tales: Stories from the Zombieverse by The Fairfield Scribes.
When Teresa’s not writing, she can be found either chasing
after one of her five kids, or hiding someplace in the house with a treat her
children overlooked. Emerald Bound is her debut novel.
You can connect with her on twitter @BYUtm33 or at authorteresarichards.com.
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