Hi friends! I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions for The Mermaid and the Unicorns by L.T. Getty. The author will be giving away a $20 Amazon or Barnes and Noble gift card at the end of the tour via Rafflecopter. Make sure you enter below and show some love to the other tour hosts as well. The more you comment, the more chances you have to win! Don't miss the sale either - the book will be $0.99 for a limited time only.
The Mermaid and the Unicorns by L.T. Getty Tour Schedule (Goddess Fish Promotions)
About the Book
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Daphne’s a typical mermaid, and at least according to her, that’s a problem. She’s courageous and has a beautiful singing voice, but lacks the power of an elemental, the ability to command water with the sound of her voice. Jealous of her best friend, she makes a deal with a sea-witch, only to be betrayed, in place of her beautiful tail and flukes Daphne’s left beached with a pair of human legs. The spell keeping Daphne looking human will become permanent, unless Daphne can hunt down and bring the scheming Lorelei a unicorn horn before the next full moon.
Unable to reach her friends and family for help, Daphne doesn’t know how to walk, much less where to find a unicorn or how to catch one. Even if she’s successful, Daphne’s still not sure if she can trust Lorelei and her pint-sized kraken to keep their end of the bargain and let her return to the sea.
Check out an excerpt from the book
"Nothing," Daphne said, unstringing the bow. "Not like I'm ever going need to use this skill. Let's just pack up and go."
"What are you talking about?" Esperanza asked. "You're already better than I am. Here, let me have a try and I'll show you."
"I've already unstrung it," Daphne snapped.
"Fine," Esperanza said, matching Daphne's tone. Esperanza went to go get more water from the river with the large buckets to boil so that they could wash their dishes.
"I'll do that. Water's heavy," Sean said, ignoring Daphne as she struggled to take their tent down.
"Here, let me help you," Esperanza said to Daphne once Sean started towards the river.
"Sure—let's send the person with the tallest reach to the river, great plan," Daphne muttered, climbing onto the wagon to reach the tip of the tent as Sean descended towards the river.
"What's your problem?" Esperanza demanded as soon as Sean was out of earshot. "We're helping you get to Taralee. Sean didn't have to come all this way, you know."
"He didn't come for me, Espy. If it was just me who wanted to go, he wouldn't care that I had to walk the whole way. What do you want, me to kiss your feet and sing your praises? Wait, I forgot—you're the better singer, you should sing your own praises. I might not do it good enough without a four-stringed harp and a cat to squeeze for background noise."
"Our voices are different. Neither one is really better than the other."
"It's just... do you know what it's like to be overlooked?"
"All the time," Esperanza said. She looked away, towards the river. "Hey, wait... be quiet for a minute."
"Don't you tell me what to do—" Daphne became mildly insulted when Esperanza put a hand over her mouth.
"Listen."
They heard singing. A beautiful, high pitched and soft melody, barely audible above the breeze. The sound had a haunting quality. "Doesn't sound like it's Sean's range," Daphne muttered, but then really heard it. She ran, and got the arrow and the quiver as well as Sean's knife and axe. She quickly strung the bow before heading towards the river bank.
"What are you doing?" Esperanza asked, following after Daphne.
"Stay with the wagon!" Daphne ordered.
Companionship, be they man or beast
A Creative Outlet
A Source for Learning
Food, probably
I don’t watch much television. If you were to put my feet to the fire, I’d probably say something that’s been done for years, like Futurama. I do regularly watch Louder with Crowder online. I guess it’s a show?
I’m not really sure, I think I get an idea when I’m consuming other people’s creative works. I enjoy listening to instrumental music when I write, but I find that I need variety in order for me to do my best writing. Not in a, “I need an expensive vacation” sort of way, but I tend to be inspired by seeing how other people make creative choices. Not so much immersion but exposure.
I am a full time paramedic, I couldn’t tell you how much time I spend a week writing because it varies. I tend to get more work done in the winter than the summer, mostly because our winters are pretty rough here in Manitoba and they chase us indoors. I mostly set goals on a weekly or monthly schedule and go from there, knowing my plans probably aren’t going to work out but, in general I keep on task.
What three works of art have most influenced your writing? This can be an actual piece of art, a movie, a book, or a video game - whatever makes the most sense for you!
Let’s be specific to The Mermaid and the Unicorns. There’s a lot – if you’ve been following along on the tour, I discuss inspirations and how much depictions of Unicorns and other fantastic horses there were in literature, I’m pretty sure that my love of girls on horses was because of She-Ra, but I’ll be honest I was watching My Little Pony from an incredibly young age.
Movie: Legend Directed by Ridley Scott
Jack (Tom Cruise) must retrieve a unicorn horn and the last unicorn from the forces of darkness (Personified by Tim Curry) as well as his beloved Princess Lily (Mia Sara) in order to break Darkness’ hold on the world.
I loved this movie as a kid. I know this clip doesn’t have anything to do with the unicorns, but I think the stand out one for most of us was The Tangerine Dream sequence.
The Last Unicorn by PS Beagle
This one is a no brainer for most of us who enjoy unicorns. My first exposure to the story was to the animated movie, much because my parents unfortunately decided animation was for children and we begged them when we saw the movie cover, but the part with the harpy is really the scariest part when you’re a kid. It’s the story about a Unicorn, discovering she is the last of her kind, going out into the world and finding out what happened to them. She teams up with possibly the worst wizard in the world in saving her kind and returning them to the world.
It’s been adapted to an animated film and graphic novel, but I do recommend that you read the book.
The Little Mermaid by Disney
Who thought I wasn’t influenced by this? To be honest I always preferred Belle and Jasmine to Ariel, she always struck me as a bit flighty, and my parents sided with King Triton even when I was a kid and I remember vague lectures about it. That being said, I loved the music and the colors, and wanted to devour more media involving mermaids as a child. And in my defence, when I wrote my novel, I was also throwing in little hints that I was consciously aware of the original tale by Hans Christian Anderson.
I also really liked the look of the Mermaids in the Mermaid lagoon from Peter Pan, but they were terrible to Wendy. https://youtu.be/bp65oAmnG7c
Come to think of it everyone is much more terrible in this movie then I remember as a kid. Just enjoy the Hook/Smee Slapstick.
I don’t normally eat while I write because i don’t like having grubby fingers on my keyboard. My go to choice is a cup of tea, but if I’m at the Daily Grind or another coffee shop I may have a mocha or a hazelnut latte, hot or cold depending on the weather and my mood. They have amazing treats there, but I don’t always indulge.
What was your hardest scene to write and why?
I want to say The Puppeteer scene, but it really wasn’t that difficult. I was more worried it would be intense. This was the inspiration for the scene, most of the movie isn’t this dark but it is darker than the Disney version.
The main reason I am labelling this as ‘hard’ is I worry what is appropriate for kids, and probably some of the stuff I shouldn’t have seen when I was a kid. I’m not saying I’m hard core or anything, I don’t feel right scaring people who aren’t ready for it.
Thing is, kids aren’t as soft as I think we’d like to paint them, and everyone’s ready for different things at different levels. Some kids are ready for say, Star Wars at 8 and others aren’t ready until they’re 10, and I was a bit worried that I was going to scare someone, but I rationalized that kids are tougher than I give them credit for.
A couple of the character’s names changed in the draft. Esperanza’s name means hope, originally it was Bedelia which meant Strength. She’s not a very physically intimidating character, I thought Esperanza suited her more.
I usually make more stupid jokes and cut them in the editing process, as well as my rule is whenever I’m done, cut at least 10% to make the draft tighter, especially banter. I’m also not particularly good at describing setting, so I also try to go back and work on characterizing the world. How much I describe the setting depends on the stylistic choices as well as the publishing house. This is self-published, so I mostly just asked other people what they thought.
In the summer, I usually get to kayak. This year has been a little abnormal, we had a lot of strong and high water, and I had to switch out my car that had the roof racks.
I have signed the second book in the Rogue Healer series called Magus’ Gambit with Champagne Books, which is slated for April 2023, but it may move a bit. The third book is also at Champagne and I’m hoping to start the fourth book for NaNoWriMo. They tend to be longer, so far each one is in the 135k range, so writing 50k in November is a good head start on what’ll probably take me the better part of a year to draft. I am on track to finish my current Work in Progress called The Puppeteers by the end of September (this title will change). My original goal was end of August, but it’s longer than I anticipated. It needs a lot of work, but editing the book in this phase is fun.
L.T. Getty is a rural paramedic from Manitoba. She enjoys writing science fiction and fantasy and generally being creative.
Amazon (American)
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09F2MRB9N/
Amazon (Canadian)
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B09F2MRB9N/
Kobo
https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/the-mermaid-and-the-unicorns
Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60006465-the-mermaid-and-the-unicorns
Barnes and Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-mermaid-and-the-unicorns-lt-getty/1140115966
Author Links:
My Blog
Thank you for hosting.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a great book.
ReplyDeleteI love the cover and think the book look good.
ReplyDeleteHappy Friday! I hope that you have enjoyed your book tour as much as I have enjoyed reading about you and your work throughout this tour. The Mermaid and the Unicorns sounds like a wonderful story and I am looking forward to reading it with my granddaughters. Have a great weekend!
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