Apprentice of Magic: Baris

Hello Champions! Today we’re going to talk about a topic I’ve been sitting on for years: Baris!

To the new Champions who have only recently joined us, the countries in my fairy tale world are usually inspired loosely by various real-world historical empires. (Usually I try to model my countries after the country of origin of the fairy tales that take place there.) Germany was the inspiration for Mullberg and Arcainia, Trieux and Loire are reminiscent of France, Erlauf is represented by the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, etc.

Baris is a country I designed long ago, even though Apprentice of Magic is the first book I’ve written that officially visits it, and it is loosely molded after the Byzantine Empire and the Ottoman Empire.

It’s a strange country in terms of its geography, so you’ll also see touches of German and French culture the farther north up its coastline you go, and by nature of being inspired by the Byzantine Empire you’ll also see a Roman influence as well, which makes it a bit of a hodgepodge.

The architecture is more reminiscent of the Byzantine Empire–the palace is loosely inspired by the famous Hagia Sophia–a Greek Orthodox Church that currently serves as a museum; it was built in what was Constantinople and is now Istanbul. Additionally, the Baris country color–a specific shade of purple called Tyrian purple– is actually the shade of the Byzantine Emperors. Even the Baris crest–a two-headed phoenix–was inspired by the Byzantine Empire’s symbol, a two headed eagle.

However, if you look at the government, I based it more off the stories I read in One Thousand and One Nights/Arabian Nights. Baris is rather unique in that it has one King, but many “princes” and “princesses” who are usually related to the king and rule over individual cities/territories. This was inspired by the opening text of One Thousand and One Nights as Baris will be the setting for that particular story far, far in the future. (The opening story of Arabian Nights explains why the king–who kills every woman he marries the day after he marries her–fell into that pattern and mentions his brother–a prince whom he gifted one of his territories.)

In geography, Baris became more of a catch all. It’s the only country to have a desert and a volcano, but it also has a great deal of coastline and some forests.

Baris is also known for being the most magic-friendly country in the continent–even back when magic was taboo in the times of the Snow Queen it was considered acceptable in Baris. It also is home to a lot of magical texts and artifacts, which seem to congregate there. I decided to give Baris this particular background as I am well versed in a lot of roman myths and I delight in the tales of One Thousand and One Nights. I thought it was fitting that countries with such rich stories would be the inspiration for the magic-accepting Baris.

And that concludes this look into Baris! Thanks for reading, Champions, and have a lovely weekend!

Apprentice of Magic: Diamonds and Toads

The fairy tale Diamonds and Toads is pretty well known... or at least the very, very basic plot points are. But how well do you know the full original story?

As I mentioned on my previous post, my book, Apprentice of Magic, is an Epic Fantasy story (not a fairy tale retelling) but since Enchantress Angelique has already had to deal with so many fairy tales in the Timeless Fairy Tales series I knew I had to include a few fairy tales and Diamonds and Toads is one of those

Which is why today Diamonds and Toads will be the lucky recipient of my sarcastic summary of a fairy tale!

Most people are familiar with the Charles Perrault version–and if that name sounds familiar it’s because he also recorded Puss in Boots and Cinderella.

It goes a little something like this:

Once upon a time there was a really cross/mean widow who had two daughters. The eldest was equally as cross/mean as the mother, but the youngest, beautiful daughter took after her deceased father, who was sweet tempered.

Anywho, the mother favored the shrewish daughter because she was similar to her, and as a result the youngest daughter got stuck with most of the chores, one of them being she had to draw water from a fountain twice a day.

One day an old woman approached the younger daughter when she was at at the fountain, and asked her for a drink. The daughter obligingly used her pitcher to give the woman a drink, and SURPRISE (or not because this is a fairy tale) the old woman was actually a fairy. This fairy gives the daughter the “gift” of every time she spoke, a flower or jewel would fall from her lips.

The girl returns home where her mother scolds her for dawdling but, lo and behold, when the youngest daughter apologizes jewels fall from her lips. The cross widow is astonished and orders her daughter to tell her what happened. Once the entire tale is told, the widow bids her older, shrewish daughter to go to the fountain as well and to act kindly.

The shrewish daughter protests, but the mother kicks her out anyway. The elder daughter reluctantly goes to the well where she finds…a beautiful princess. The princess was really the fairy in disguise #surprisednotsurprised who asks the daughter to give her water.

The shrewish daughter insults the princess/fairy and implies the princess/fairy is a brat, though she does tell her she can use the pitcher if she likes. (Though it seems that she does not offer to draw the water for her.)

In response, the fairy calmly bestows a gift upon the eldest daughter: that every time she speaks a toad or snake will drop from her lips.

The eldest rushes home and tattles to her mother (while dropping a toad and viper from her mouth.) The mother decides this is the youngest daughter’s fault (because…reasons) and banishes her from the house.

A king finds the youngest daughter, crying, and bids her to tell him what’s wrong. She explains–dropping jewels the whole time–and miraculously the King’s son, who happens to be with him, falls in love with her jewels–I MEAN HER! He totally fell in love with her! In the span of a single conversation. Yep.

Since the girl could drop jewels with a word, they decided it didn’t matter that she’s a peasant, and she’s taken off to the palace where she weds her prince. The shrewish older daughter, however, continues to act so spiteful the window banishes her from the house as well, and eventually she starves and dies.

And…er…Happily Ever After??

So I decided to mix up this story a bit in Apprentice of Magic. I knew I wanted to make the oldest daughter good, because as a kid I never really understood why it was such a bad thing that she spoke toads and snakes. (I made a toad farm every summer as a kid, and I was fascinated with amphibians and reptiles in general.)

Moreover, I knew as a law-abiding adult who pays taxes, that miraculously producing bucketfuls of gems would also be a gigantic pain because of the logistics of selling them, and being taxed for them. (Not to mention the mysterious ability would likely be questioned by officials, who would muck up the girl’s daily life. And does anyone really think the prince fell in love with the youngest daughter because he heard how she was kind to a fairy one time??)

So instead, the tale worked perfectly into Apprentice of Magic as a teaching moment–not for the girls, but Angelique.

In fairy tales, enchantresses, fairies, and the like usually run around, tossing out curses and granting boons without actually talking to their victims. Frankly, that’s a horrible way to grant magical gifts. So I wanted Angelique to learn discernment. And thus, my plan for Diamonds and Toads was born.

And if you're now interested in reading how I incorporated Diamonds and Toads into my book you can find it using the links below in Kindle Unlimited, or ebook / paperback!

Click here for Amazon.com Or Click here for all other Amazon stores

Apprentice of Magic: The Fairy Tales

For those of you who are new to my work, the Fairy Tale Enchantress series–which begins with Apprentice of Magic–is the culmination of my Timeless Fairy Tale series, which basically asks “what if all fairy tales happened in the same 5-10 year period and were interconnected?” Angelique is the enchantress that ties every fairy tale together, and so through out the series you’ll see her trot through many familiar fables and tales.

Most of this fun starts after Evariste is captured, but I wanted this to be a theme in Angelique’s life, so I threw some well known stories/fables in Apprentice of Magic as well!

The big ones were:

1. The Boy Who Cried Wolf

2. Pinocchio

3. The Emperor’s New Clothes

4. Goldilocks

5. Diamonds and Toads

You also get to see the start of Sleeping Beauty and Rumpelstiltskin–and even a hint of Beauty and the Beast if you really squint–but the big two stories you see play out in the book are The Boy Who Cried Wolf and Diamonds and Toads. (I did actually write Angelique’s adventure with The Emperor’s New Clothes as a bonus story/chapter, so if you haven’t seen it, you can check it out here: The Dukes Clothes)

I picked all of the above tales because they struck me as being on the sillier side–or rather they showed the potential for humor. (We’re talking about you, Wybert.) But in order to let that play out, I had to twist them a bit.

I think just about everyone has heard of the Boy Who Cried Wolf, but just in case you haven’t, here is a short summary: A bratty shepherd gets bored with his job and finds great joy in shouting falsely about wolves attacking the sheep so the villagers come rampaging to an unneeded rescue. Because no one bothers to punish the boy (because why would you, I mean, he only disrupted an entire village for a joke) he does it again and gets the same amusing results. Eventually the villagers no longer trust him so when a wolf does emerge from the woods and the morally-questionable shepherd shouts for help, no one comes. As a result, the wolf slaughters multiple sheep.

Now I’m all for showing the consequences of actions, but when I read this story it always struck me as rather unfair that its the sheep who pay for the brat’s actions. (I mean, we can assume the shepherd was punished by the owner of the sheep, but the story never tells us this.)

So when I decided I wanted Angelique to teach this kid a lesson, I knew I wanted her to do it in a way that would directly punish the shepherd, not his animals. Additionally, I needed her to do it in a way that would provide practice for her as new apprentice.

And that launched my idea of creating illusion wolves to scare the lies out of dear little Wybert. 😉 (It also lead to my friends deciding perhaps it would be better if they never asked me to babysit their children.)

On the other end of the spectrum, you have Diamonds and Toads, which will be the discussion of my next post!