Happy December 9th! The Kindle contest is still underway. Here's how it works: you nominate a friend/family member/coworker/etc. who you think needs a Kindle (tell us why they need/deserve one!) I'll be collecting entries until December 21st and then a winner will be chosen and the person nominated and the one who nominated them will both receive a Kindle! You only have to nominate a person once but you can nominate different people on different days if you want to. All you have to do to enter is comment on one of the Advent Calendar posts between now and then. But there are also daily giveaways of cool stuff too! Daily winners will be selected from that day's comments.

Yesterday's winner of a signed copy of Kiss of Night is Beth Hsaygood. Congratulations! To enter today's giveaway, just comment below. Today's goodie is an excerpt from Violet Eyes and some insight on my future plans involving fairy tales. Today's winner will receive a signed copy of Violet Eyes. Here's your goodie:

To read an excerpt from Violet Eyes click here.

I love retold fairy tales. I've written versions of The Little Mermaid, Little Red Riding Hood, and The Princess and the Pea. My future plans do include more retold fairy tales although I'm trying to work out how exactly I want to do that. I've thought about continuing to write individual titles and I've also toyed with putting together my own anthology of retold fairy tales. Stories I'm particularly eager to do include: Hansel and Gretel, The Prince and the Pauper, and Goldilocks. I have titles picked out for all three of these stories, but that information is classified for now! My favorite story is Beauty and the Beast and someday I'd like to do a version of that one. Belle is my favorite Disney princess and that is my favorite Disney animated film. I'm a sucker for happy endings so I enjoy some of the modern adaptations that turn tragedies like The Little Mermaid into wonderful stories of love conquering all.

For Violet Eyes, a retelling of The Princess and the Pea, I did a lot of research and discovered that many, many cultures had their own version of this story. In fact, some of the other princesses and tests in Violet Eyes come from those other cultures! Many of these stories also contain an animal helper who befriends the princess. That's why I used the prince's dog as a courier carrying messages between the Prince and Violet.