Blog Tour, Guest Post & Giveaway: Cinderella, Necromancer by F.M. Boughan

Crushed on by kelly, on September 8, 2017, in Blog Tour, Giveaways, Guest Post, New Releases / 2 Comments

Blog Tour, Guest Post & Giveaway: Cinderella, Necromancer by F.M. Boughan

Cinderella, Necromancer by F.M. Boughan was just released on Tuesday and I am happy to be a part of the blog tour and share with you all today! Check out what F.M. Boughan has to say about her genre inspiration for Cinderella, Necromancer! Be sure to enter the awesome tour-wide giveaway!

 

Cinderella, Necromancer by F.M. Boughan

Category: Young Adult, Fantasy, Retellings
Publication: September 5th, 2017; Month9Books
Purchase: Amazon, B&N, Kobo, TBD, iBooks

Cinderella, Necromancer is Chime meets Anna Dressed in Blood and was inspired by a real medieval grimoire of necromancy from 15th-century Germany.

Ellison lost her mother at an early age. But since then, her father has found love again. He’s happy and doesn’t quite notice that Ellison does not get along with his new wife or her mean daughters. When Ellison discovers a necromantic tome while traveling the secret passages of her father’s mansion, she wonders if it could be the key to her freedom. Until then, she must master her dark new power, even as her stepmother makes her a servant in her own home. And when her younger brother falls incurably ill, Ellison will do anything to ease his pain, including falling prey to her stepmother and stepsisters’ every whim and fancy.

Stumbling into a chance meeting of Prince William during a secret visit to her mother’s grave feels like a trick of fate when her stepmother refuses to allow Ellison to attend a palace festival. But what if Ellison could see the kind and handsome prince once more? What if she could attend the festival? What if she could have everything she ever wanted and deserved by conjuring spirits to take revenge on her cruel stepmother?

As Ellison’s power grows, she loses control over the evil spirits meant to do her bidding. And as they begin to exert their own power over Ellison, she will have to decide whether it is she or her stepmother who is the true monster.

 

Excerpt:

Excerpt from Chapter Four: The Leaving

He left that same morning, quietly, while the rest of the world still slept. I watched from my window as he galloped down the road that would lead him through town, past the King’s palace, and out the other side on the road headed north. For years I’d begged him to take me on one of his distant journeys, and after Mother’s death, he’d promised his trips would never again separate the family. We had to stick together now.

Celia’s arrival had changed everything.

Father and his horse had barely disappeared from sight when someone rapped on my door—three sharp knocks, and a fourth with ominous finality.

I suppose I shouldn’t have answered, but at the time, some small part of me must have hoped that Father’s leaving had only been an illusion or some semblance of a nightmare, and that he actually stood on the other side of my door once again, waiting.

But Celia Not-Mother stood there instead, hands clasped at her middle.

“Your father has taken leave for several days to do business in Neustadt. Be a good girl and bring me up a pot of tea. Sweet child.”

The last she added as an afterthought.

Be a good girl? For Father, certainly. For her?

“That is not my place,” I said, for I had no knowledge of kitchens and pots, nor the necessary interest to deduce what might be needed. “Miss Mary—”

“Is no longer in our employ.”

A breath caught in my throat. Father’s trail barely minutes cold, and already she’d loosed the woman who’d nursed us and raised us during Mother’s frequent convalesces. Miss Mary had no children or family of her own save us.

“You didn’t,” I said, fists firm at my sides. “You can’t.”

Celia lifted her chin as though height meant power and folded her arms across the looseness of the blue silk robe she wore which—I swear it, even now—once belonged to my mother.
“I can, and I did. A needless expenditure, she. We must be careful with our coins, child.”

Tell that to the curtains and pillows.

She tapped a slippered foot. “Tea, child. In my room. I will be waiting.”

Indeed she would.

 

Guest Post:

What inspired you to mash together a fairy-tale retelling with a dark gothic power like necromancy?

I can’t really point to one specific thing that inspired this retelling, because it was more of a mash-up of things I’d encountered that kind of all piled together at once!

I think the earliest beginnings of inspiration came from a book that a family member gifted to me—it was a history text by Richard Kieckhefer (a professor at Northwestern University) called Magic in the Middle Ages. Specifically, it has a chapter discussing the use of magic and necromantic tomes that were created by Catholic clergy—yes, there really was kind of an “underground society” of clergymen who practiced black magic!—during this period, which got me interested in the historical topic on a larger scale.

I mention this in the Historical Note at the back of Cinderella, Necromancer, but this led me to Kieckhefer’s second, more extensive volume on the topic, Forbidden Rites, in which he actually translates and discusses a 15th-century grimoire found in Germany, marked as belonging to the Royal Library of Munich—which is a strange thing to even have existed, considering these types of magic books were anathema at the time, totally forbidden and entirely heretical.

The combination of this historical element with the well-known Cinderella fairy-tale was then brought about by a few factors. First, one of the original versions of the tale is also German (“Aschenputtel”), and second, I started thinking about what would have happened if Cinderella had fought back—instead of letting her stepmother and stepsisters roll all over her—as well as asked myself “what if there was no fairy godmother?” Everything sort of snowballed from there!

Once I started writing, the pieces all fell into place, and I enjoyed seeing how I could pull in elements from other, well-known versions of the fairy-tale while maintaining my own unique spin on the story.

I’m so glad it found a home and that readers are enjoying it!

 

Author Bio: F.M. Boughan

F.M. Boughan is a bibliophile, a writer, and an unabashed parrot enthusiast. She can often be found writing in local coffee shops, namely because it’s hard to concentrate with a cat lying on the keyboard and a small, colorful parrot screaming into her ear. Her work is somewhat dark, somewhat violent, somewhat hopeful, and always contains a hint of magic.

Links:
Website  **  Twitter  **  Facebook  **  Goodreads

 

Giveaway:

One (1) winner will receive an Echo Dot

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

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