The Gingerbread Girl

It was after dinner that things got weird. Grace was sitting at the counter admiring the gingerbread house Mom had made earlier that week when suddenly she heard a quiet, high-pitched noise.

            She leaned in close and peered inside the little window.

            Ah!

            Grace quickly pushed the gingerbread house away, alarmed, then closed her eyes and counted to three. “When I look inside the house again, it will be empty,” she promised herself. She put her eye to the tiny window again, but sure enough, the little gingerbread girl was still inside, running around in circles.

“Help me!” she exclaimed frantically in a high-pitched voice. “I’m trapped in here!”

            This time, Grace didn’t close her eyes. “I’ll help you,” she promised the little girl, and, shaking slightly, started to lift the roof off the house.

            Grace’s little brother Jake suddenly came running into the room, and when he saw Grace with Mom’s gingerbread house, he darted over. “What are you doing?” he asked. “I’m gonna tell Mom you broke her house!”

            “No, look!” Grace said, pulling the roof the rest of the way from the house. She set it on the counter and gestured for Jake to look inside.

            But his reaction was different than what she expected . . .

            Instead of screaming when he saw the gingerbread girl, he just picked her up and bit her head off!

            The little gingerbread girl turned back into a normal cookie pretty quick.

Sorry it's been 12 years!

Hi blog world, it's been a minute . . . or two. Sorry about that!

Little update on my life:

I moved to Spain for a year and a half! (I still miss it every day)
I moved back to America!
I enrolled in an abstract algebra class at university!
I understood absolutely NOTHING in that class!
So . . . what did I do instead of trying fruitlessly to pay attention?

I WROTE A BOOK!

It's currently titled Deck the Halls, but I'm looking to change the title. Because . . . boring!

I normally just refer to it in my head slash the twelve versions of it as the "Noelle Christmas" book.

My poor sweet roommates who have to put up with me bouncing ideas off of them at the most random times think of it as my "Joseph the Jew" book.

I've been sending a nice little query letter out to agents, and I'll post that on here, too--just for fun! And who knows, maybe some literary agent will look for obscure, rarely-upated blogs and see it :)

Dear _______,

Noelle Christmas may as well have been named Gingerbread for all the mistletoe jokes she got growing up.

She’s resigned herself to her tinseled fate until her family moves to Washington and a mix-up at her new school lets her pretend her last name is Christensen instead of Christmas. Noelle is thrilled to finally distance herself from her holiday-obsessed family and immediately starts reaping the benefits of her new identity: a popular best friend, a charmingly cute boyfriend, and most importantly, no more Christmas jokes.

Everything seems to be going great until Joseph, the Jewish kid who sits next to her in history, happens to spy her family’s painfully festive Halloween tree in the window. He agrees to keep Noelle’s real last name a secret, on the condition that he gets to meet the fabled Christmas family. However, the deal starts to fall apart when Noelle’s parents decide that Joseph’s the perfect match for her. Now her family is eagerly trying to woo the wrong boy with an excessively-decorated Hanukkah tree and aggressive Christmas caroling, leaving Noelle scrambling to balance their insane attempts at matchmaking and her fragile new social life.

Shoot. Noelle’s perfect plan suddenly doesn’t seem so perfect anymore.

DECK THE HALLS is my debut young adult novel, complete at 75,000 words. Readers who love happy-ending romantic comedies will be entertained by this lighthearted holiday story.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Kindly,

___________ (my name, but you internet people can't know that of course!)

Anywho, that's where I'm at with that. Here's a random cover that I made just now on powerpoint (LOVE POWERPOINT) because I'm procrastinating (wait for it) my abstract algebra homework.

Love college.

Throwback Friday (I do what I want) to the history of the covers of LDYH. It's missing the most recent one, so I guess I'll post that one too:

I decided a while ago to make it go with the "Tangled" color scheme- because why not?

Because I'm Bored

Inspiration for today. I have too much time...

Just Ema

So over the past four or five months, I've been working on a new book. At the moment, it's titled "Just Ema". I'm not sure how long that will last. It used to be Cinderemma, then Cinderema, then Letters to Ema, now it's "Just Ema".


Here's the summary:

The gates were closed, which Ema found a little strange. There were people coming in and out every few minutes, weren't there?

She gave up the thought in her quest to find something that would open the gates. Finally she found a black box, which she hesitantly spoke into.

"I'm here for the ball," she said.

The box crackled into commission. "The ball?" The person on the other end of the line chuckled and the gates stayed shut. "Sorry to disappoint, but the last guests left a few hours ago," they said before the sound turned to a fuzzy static.

"What?"

***

Ema shouldn't have even been at the ball. It should have been Char. But Lanelle Taylor had forbidden her to attend, and Char had insisted that Ema go in her place.

And now Ema was late to the ball- twelve hours late- and had broken her mother's necklace. And probably her ankle. And Char's dress. Was it even possible to break a dress?

If it was, Ema definitely had done it.

So far the night was going wonderfully.

Ema's pretty much a mix of all of the best aspects of the main characters from LDYH and WTF. She's pretty funny, like Sarah. She's tough- like Veronica. She has Elisabeth's klutziness- which might not be a good thing but it definitely provides for some interesting situations.

Her sister Char, meanwhile, doesn't really have any of the traits of any of the characters who I've met yet. She's pretty much a real-life Disney princess. To prove this, here's a quote of something Char actually says at one point in the novel:

"I just love love! I love being in love, I don't care what it does to me!"

Yeah. She's that kind of person. She's Ema's younger sister by about 3 1/2 years and Ema will do absolutely anything for her.

I don't want to give away too much about the book, because I'm hoping that I'll someday get it published. But rest assured that there's a Prince, a Princess, a shoe, a palace (well, technically it's a Manor House), a stepmother, two stepsisters, several gowns, and a lot of other lovely things.

If you'd like to learn more, you can email me at holly-ruth@hotmail.com or PM me on wattpad.

Ema

This is Ema.

~~~

~~~

"Char wears enough color for the two of us." -Just Ema

That is all.

Possible New LDYH Covers

Okay. So I have this minor obsession with powerpoint (this has already been established). And the other day, I was like "maybe I should switch up the covers of LDYH and WTF (on powerpoint, of course) so they correspond with the colors of the disney versions!" And I really a lot enjoyed the new WTF cover:

And then I set to work making a LDYH cover that corresponded with the Tangled color scheme, and it just ISN'T HAPPENING for me. There's this one:

Then there's  the one below it, where I pretty much just reversed the colors.

AND there's the original, which in my opinion is the best so far:

But you see, the issue is that even though the original one looks the best, I really quite a lot (I think we already covered this) like the new Who's The Fairest one. And I can't have one cover be the color scheme of the movie and the other one not be. I NEED HELP with these covers. Color suggestions, things that look super weird (I know there are a LOT of those- it won't offend me if you're blunt), things that might possible look good...

Give them to me. Please. I'm really quite desperate here.

Thanks guys! You're the best.

Holly

Inspiration Board #5: The Apartment

So, awhile back I posted something that was... um... concept art? for the many houses of Elisabeth. But I actually went really into depth in a couple of them, specifically the apartment. For the first 5ish chapters of LDYH, I wasn't planning on her ever living anywhere but there. She was going to get to know Timothy and there was going to be some dramatic thing where Mother got home while they were in the apartment together. Then she (Mother) was going to go to jail, Elisabeth was going to find out she had some wealthy Danish relatives, and her and Timothy were going to go live with them in Denmark in some fancy palace and that was going to be the end of it.
Talk about lame.
HOWEVER, this terrible original idea did lead to the formation of a super-crowded slide all about the apartment- the only home Elisabeth was ever going to know.

 

I realized after awhile that I'd made a sort of line almost halfway across the page filled with pictures that reminded me of the apartment. On the left were soft, girlish, friendly-looking (can rooms even be friendly?) rooms, like how I picture Elisabeth's room. On the right were sharp modern lines, mostly in grays and muted natural tones- like how I picture Mother's room. I imagine the house overall was more like Mother's side of the slide, but the kitchen was probably lighter and airier, and possibly one of the living rooms.

 

Anyways, this is the place Elisabeth called home for 13 years.

 

You've been enlightened.

 

Enjoy :)

I like Max

I'm a fan of Max. A lot. I would date him.

If he were real.

This is sad, guys. I have a crush on a fictional character I made up in my own mind. What is my life.

Seriously, though. We're just going to talk about Max for a minute. I don't have an inspiration board for him because I really don't know that much about him, and he's also not a girl, which means less pretty things apply to him than I'd like- and I really only enjoy making things out of pretty things.

Back to Max, though.

It might seem like him and Josh are polar opposites, which is a little bit weird considering they're twins. In reality, though, they're really similar.

They both have the capability to be a leader. They're both really smart. They both have crushes on girls who they've known for years. Max is just better at controlling himself.

He found out about Elisabeth's past at the same time Kiana did. Kiana flipped out. He took it in stride and dealt with the issue that needed to be dealt with. He'll never really ask why she didn't tell him everything, because he knows that he'll find out eventually.

Patience is virtue, and Max has it.

He reminds me a little bit of Timothy. He would walk a little bit faster to open a door for a girl. He does his homework on time. He works hard and doesn't complain when Julie asks him to babysit on the night of a dance- even though he probably wanted to go.

Max made sure "Rose" was comfortable at school on her first day- and checked, without her knowing and without any prompting from Julie, to make sure she made it to where she was supposed to be every day for the rest of that first week.

Max noticed Sarah liked him, after he and Kiana started dating (Actually, pause. I was so super sad when I realized he liked Kiana and I'd have to make him not be single anymore. Because he sometimes acts REALLY stupid when things involve her. He wants her to be happy and she's completely perfect in his eyes. Which, I mean, is sweet, I guess. But come on. They're only in high school. ALSO, as I mentioned before, I have some weird sort of crush on this fictional character I created. He checks all the boxes on my figurative (did I use that word right?) list of things a guy needs to have to be perfect. And now he has a girlfriend. *cries*. Okay... un-pause). 


Max is a compromiser.

Max is patient.

Max is a great big brother.

Max is cute. :)

I like Max.

And you should too.

Inspiration Board #4: Meet Sarah

Sarah's actually one of my favorite characters in Who's The Fairest. She kind of reminds me of how one of my best friends used to act in, like, 9th grade, but she's really just a mix of everyone ever and at the same time totally her own person. She's super boss- the most boss person in WTF- with the exception of maybe Max (I'll talk about him later), and Julie and Krista and Lisa.

Anyway, Sarah's inspiration slide has just gotten messier and messier as I've gotten to know her and I see things and immediately think "Oh, Sarah would love that!" Hence the watermelon bike. She would think that's the coolest thing ever, hands down. There used to be a pair of cow socks on there until I realized those were something Kiley (from wayyyy back in Texas) would have liked. Sarah would hate Kiley and immediately shun cow socks as soon as she realized Kiley liked them, so naturally they were deleted as soon as I realized this.

Also. There's a picture of this girl with her hair all in these branches and stuff. It looks super intense. And Sarah would have totally done it- as a joke. Then called Kiana or Max and gotten them to come see her, and she would strike that exact pose and would say something like "I am one with my inner soul", then realize she was super stuck and Kiana would have to spend the next hour untangling her.

Sarah would never apologize, and Kiana would just sigh. But that's just Sarah.

The girl in the far right is what I most picture Sarah as looking like, but she also sometimes looks like the one on the far left.

She'd never actually put daisies- or any flowers- in her hair, but she probably struck that same pose on her bed, all exasperated and stuff, as soon as she got home after spilling Elisabeth's secret. Like "Shoot. What did I just do?"

Although she also might have struck it if Elisabeth or Kiana ever decided to practice their photography on her, and forced her to put those in her hair. She'd be counting the seconds until it was over.

Because that's just Sarah.

I just think she's the coolest person ever.

Elisabeth told her about the letters from M first, and she kept it secret- er, for awhile. She's a little crazy. But now Sarah's just toughing through watching her best friend date her crush. She does a sport... or two... or three a season and is just the craziest person alive.

I adore her. I don't think anyone in the story would be the way they were if it weren't for Sarah.

Keep rocking it, Sarah. You're the best.