Why King Thrushbeard and Bluebeard?

Now that Sands of Deceit has been out for a little bit, it’s time to start the behind the scenes posts! As usual, slight spoilers ahead if you haven’t read Sands of Deceit!

If you’re unfamiliar with these two more obscure fairytales, you can read King Thrushbeard here and Bluebeard here!

Alright, disclosure time. This book wasn’t supposed to exist. The Bewitching Fairy Tale series was supposed to be six books and six books only. Now it’s eight thanks to this book and my decision to split the last book into two so it’s not ridiculously long, even longer than Cinders of Glass was. It was supposed to go from Songs of Stone directly into Dreams of Roses.

How you might ask since the entire plot of Sands of Deceit leads directly into Dreams of Roses? And I would say, excellent question. I don’t know. I hadn’t outlined Dreams of Roses when Sands of Deceit was added to the lineup, all I knew was that Dreams of Roses would be a Sleeping Beauty/King Midas retelling that featured Ro and the secret that comes out about her.

But shortly after I published Stalks of Gold, my best friend read it and asked me when was Hakim’s story coming? And I said… It’s not? I told her I had no intentions of featuring Hakim as lead… anymore.

Originally, in the early, early stages of Songs of Stone, back when it was going to be the Pied Piper and Hansel and Gretel, I considered making Hakim the main male lead. But it just wasn’t right. I thought maybe Loraine would send him out to investigate the strange things going on and that they might be happening in Astren, but I quickly scrapped that and realized Sandman and Castia were better fits for the Pied Piper story.

(Can you imagine though an alternate universe where Hakim was the one who ran into Piper?)

So I decided Hakim didn’t get a story and was moving on my merry way until my friend said that. And I decided to reconsider. I went back to my list of fairytales and l looked at all of them to see if there was a combo I missed, and… I didn’t see it. I saw a few similarities between King Thrushbeard and Bluebeard, mostly the beard aspect, but it didn’t click.

Of course, I knew immediately the second I looked at King Thrushbeard who would be the perfect princess. Gisele. Not even a question. But since I couldn’t see the way to really blend them together, I went back to my friend to tell her. And as I started listing the reasons why Hakim and these fairytales didn’t work together, I made the mistake of saying unless…

And then I sent her like fifteen text messages working my way through the plot premise of Sands of Deceit before she had even responded to the first. So I ended up with an extra book.

As for why these two stories?

I won’t lie. Them both having beard in the title was very appealing. I also really liked that both stories centered on the secrets the man was keeping from his wife. The fact both stories involved marriage even though they had wildly different endings was also nice. There weren’t as many cross over points in these two, but I could see enough to work with.

I also knew early on this story would directly lead into Dreams of Roses, and if it was going to do that, then it was going to be set in Esmea. And if it was going to be set in Esmea, I needed to get Hakim and Gisele in Esmea. Thankfully, I’d already written Hakim as being, not fully Astrian, so setting him up as half-Esmean for the Thrushbeard aspect as well as the spying aspect was easy.

And since they were going to be spying… an undercover fake marriage instead of a real one was perfect.

There was the uh… Bluebeard aspect to contend with. The whole murdering his wives bit. And Since Hakim was also going to be Bluebeard, that was going to be tricky. Which is how I got to the very convoluted aspect of the story with the witness protection program for lack of a better term. Instead of them being murdered, what if everyone just thought they were being murdered?

And what if the real trap with the key came from someone else… What if the appearance of the Bluebeard hallmarks with the closet was a red herring for the real trap being laid for our heroine? And that led perfectly into where I needed the story to go for an explosive set up for the next book.

In the end, I just love writing flawed heroines and redemption stories. So King Thrushbeard is really after my own heart in that aspect, and Bluebeard was just too interesting and had just enough for me to work with to really bridge the gap between Songs of Stone and Dreams of Roses, so thank my dear friend for asking for Hakim’s story because otherwise, we wouldn’t be here right now!

I’ll see you all next time as I dive into more detail about the specific aspects of each fairytale that I used and how I combined them! If you haven’t gotten grabbed Sands of Deceit you can do so here!