The Bride By Kacie Taylor
A YA Fantasy novel
What is a king without a queen?
Callia is chosen to be the next potential Bride of the king, a man many call a demon. Will she die like the other Brides before her? Can she survive in a place where nothing is what it seems, facing fear and friendship, love and betrayal? For the castle holds a secret only a Bride can discover.
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Kacie Taylor was born and raised in Utah. She is married to a wonderful man who supports her as she attempts to live her dream as an author. She started writing during the summer after graduating from high school and hasn't stopped since. When she's not typing away on her computer, she might be reading, cooking, eating, watching a horrendous amount of TV, snuggling with her hubby, playing with her niece and nephews, drawing, painting, eating some more, or spending time with her family.
Hello and welcome to the Spotlight Kacie! Can you tell us your main inspiration behind this novel?
This story was inspired by Beauty and the Beast, which is one of my all-time favorite fairy tales. I incorporated a fresh voice and a few twists to this classic to make it my own. I very pleased with how it turned out.
Was self-publishing your first choice? What was the most nerve wracking part of the process?
For this book, yes, self-publishing was my first choice. This is not the first book I've written, though. The first one, which will be the next one I publish, was sent out to numerous publishing houses and rejected. It wasn't until years later that I even knew self-publishing was possible. The process was surprisingly easy. I started with lulu.com, which I plan to use again in the future. The hardest part was actually figuring out how to convert my document file into an ebook file, since I'm not very tech savvy. I got the hang of it.
As a self-published author, did you choose to edit your novel yourself? What was the biggest change you made to the story and/or characters?
I thought I would have to edit it myself. Freelance editors can be expensive and I am on the poor side. Luckily, my sister-in-law worked as an editor for a local magazine for several years. When she quit to take care of their baby boy, she agreed to be my editor. She is awesome, and doesn't go easy on me just because we're family. I didn't have to change much in The Bride. Mostly just some clarification stuff and grammar errors. I'm notorious for using semicolons the wrong way.
Do you have any unusual writing habits that aide your process and/or character development?
I guess one thing that is unusual is that I work on several projects at once. When I have an idea for a particular story, I have to write it down or else I'll forget. Then I'll go back to whatever I was working on before. I have close to 200 stories outlined, with several in the actual writing process. This might be why I only have two completed books and only one of them published. It's slow, but it works for me.
Is there one passage or scene from your novel that you are most fond of?
Tough question! There are some scenes later in the book that are my most favorite, but they would spoil too much. Another I really like, though, is in chapter four when the king has invited Callia to the library for their first meeting.
The door closes behind me. I look all
around, though I see no one. The windows are draped, casting deep shadows on
the walls and their rows of books. A few candles flickering on a table across
from me give off a bit of light. Perhaps he's not here yet.
“Hello?” I call out, noticing the hint
of hope in my voice that my greeting will go unanswered.
Something moves in the shadows. A tall
figure stands there, keeping out of the light. His silhouette is all I see, but
it's enough to make me step back until I bump into the door.
“Miss Hurnel, thank you for coming,”
says a deep, raspy voice.
My own voice seems to have fled. I
manage a small noise of acknowledgment from somewhere in the back of my throat.
“Please have a seat,” he says,
gesturing to a chair at the table.
The invitation seems simple enough,
but he may as well ask me to fly out the window. “I'm fine here,” I say, my
voice catching.
“As you wish. I'll make this as brief
as possible so you can continue with your day. You have come here to be my
Bride, most likely against your will. I assure you, however, that you do have a
choice in the matter. They all did.”
A wave of disbelief and anger pushes
my nervousness aside. “They had a choice?” I blurt out. “Are you telling me the
other Brides chose to die?”
“Yes, Miss Hurnel,” the king says, his
tone unchanged. “I will tell you the same thing I told all of them. At the
conclusion of your time here, if you confess love to me, we shall marry. If you
don't, I will let you leave. But, should you confess love to anyone else during
that time, you will die. Not one Bride in two hundred years has chosen either
of the first two. They chose death. If you think that makes me a heartless
monster, so be it. But I did not force them to do anything.”
My head whirls with this
information. He admits to killing hundreds of girls, yet all I can focus on is
that he gave them a way out. I have a way out. I wish I had a chair
to sit in. Moving forward, I take a seat at the table and notice, for the first
time, a slender wooden box standing amongst the candles. Elegant flowers and
scrolled designs are carved on the outside. They remind me of the topiaries
outside.
“Open it,” the king says.
I glance up at his silhouette and then
look back at the box. Pulling it closer, I lift the lid and peer inside at a
slim, silver hourglass filled with tiny glass beads of every color imaginable.
I gawk at it, recognizing it as the image on the wax seals, though unable to
guess its purpose.
“This hourglass determines the length
of time in which you will be here,” he explains. “If you look at the bottom
chamber, you'll see that beads have already begun to fall. When the last one
drops, you will make your choice.”
I lift the timepiece out of the box,
seeing that, indeed, a few glass beads rest in the lower chamber. Countless
beads still reside in the top.
“How much time is left?” I ask, unable to betray my
eagerness to know.
The king snorts. “I have no idea. It
resets itself when a Bride . . . departs. Since none have made it to the end, I
could only guess. One Bride made it six months, so that long at least.”
His callousness stuns me. He speaks as
if the girls' comings and goings were nothing more than simple visits. I need
not wonder why none of them chose him. “Why do you want a Bride so badly?” I
ask without thinking first.
He doesn't speak for several seconds.
“What is a king without a queen?”
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Thanks, Jill Marie!!
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And FYI to anyone interested, I republished an updated version of The Bride over the weekend. It has a slightly different cover. B&N has not updated their version yet, and they're not showing the discounted price. Amazon and lulu are fully updated, though.