Sands of Deceit Inspiration

Today I’m talking about the inspiration behind Sands of Deceit! More, I’ve already talked about it some. Some spoilers ahead! (Alright big spoilers ahead if you haven’t finished Sands of Deceit!)

We’ll start with King Thrushbeard. A story after my own heart, focusing on a humbled heroine and her redemption arc. Here are the hallmarks I found:

• Beautiful but proud and arrogant girl that found no suitor good enough for her
• She insults all of the suitors, including a king with a beard she calls King Thrushbeard
• Her father swears he’ll marry her off to the first beggar who shows up, who is a minstrel
• After she’s married to the minstrel, she has to live in squalor and learn how to do labor
• After she fails at all other work, he gets her a position in the palace of King Thrushbeard
• She works in the kitchen and was paid with jars of leftovers
• She watches from the side at the king’s wedding, and when he tries to dance with her, the jars break and the food spills out, humiliating her
• The king reveals he’s the minstrel she married and had disguised himself

Here are the hallmarks I found for Bluebeard:

• A wealthy man with an ugly beard with several wives that no one knew what happened to them
• Bluebeard wanted to marry again so he hosted a week of parties for a woman, her two daughters, and their friends
• The youngest daughter decides to marry him
• After a month, Bluebeard goes away and gives her the keys telling her she can use any of them except for smallest one that opens a little closet
• The woman opens the closet to find his previous wives all murdered
• The key is a trap that and the blood on it won’t come off, revealing her actions to Bluebeard
• He attempts to kill her, but she stalls long enough for her brothers to rescue her

It’s pretty easy to see how I applied most of these two fairytales. Gisele is the beautiful but arrogant, spoiled girl who gets humbled in a slightly different manner. She doesn’t insult a slew of suitors, but her disastrous first meeting with Hakim happens at the ball where Prince Cynrik is supposed to be choosing his wife. Instead, her father is convicted of treason and she loses all her status and power because of that.

Gisele also, is the minstrel, instead of Hakim. Mostly because Hakim had far too much already going on, and also because I knew it would be a better fit for Gisele since it was an undercover mission. Having her as the singer got her access to rooms she wouldn’t otherwise have access to and was a fun sort of other way to include that aspect of the story in a subtler way.

Hakim is obvious in how he was Thrushbeard, as playing Lord Karim and being Andor, Gisele’s fake husband. I had a lot of fun reimagining the scene where Gisele discovers Hakim is also Karim. I snuck in their dance in an earlier scene and turned this one into a much more dramatic, life threatening situation a moment of realization as opposed to Gisele being told. I also had fun working in the jars of food breaking and spilling as a purposeful, calculated action by Gisele to distract everyone, giving her a little more power in the situation.

As for Bluebeard, that was a little more work. Because at first it seems clear that Karim is the Bluebeard figure with his disappearing wives and Gisele discovering what’s really going on, when at first she believed they were being murdered. Since Hakim disguised as Karim was Bluebeard, I knew I didn’t want him to actually be killing them. I don’t write those kind of romances! So once that happens and Gisele joins him, it looks like that’s that regarding the Bluebeard aspect—until Lady Ro arrives.

Our real Bluebeard. Sort of.

She’s there to investigate our Bluebeard who looks like he’s murdering women. But when it comes to the most important aspects of Bluebeard, the secrets, the danger, winning over a young woman’s trust, the tests, specifically, laying a trap for the woman involving a key and a room designed to engender curiosity? Lady Ro fits all of that more than Hakim/Karim does the surface level plot aspects. Lady Ro is the real Bluebeard.

Did you catch it?

Because Lady Ro was one of my favorite parts of the story… not just because of what happens at the end with her.

I just had such a blast with these two fairytales, not just combining them but working them into a framework of a fake undercover marriage to uncover a big secret. Gisele and Hakim were such an explosive, dynamic couple and I miss them already. I genuinely cannot imagine what this series would look like without these two and their spy story especially with how perfectly they set up Dreams of Roses!

I can’t tell you how excited I am for the last two books of the series which will both focus on Ro and the gold-eyed man! If you haven’t gotten grabbed Sands of Deceit you can do so here!