"The Mermaid and the Unicorn" Release Date!

Dear Friends,

I am so excited to announce the establishment of my publishing company – Geek Haus Press – and the release date for my first novel, “The Mermaid and the Unicorn.” After four long years of waiting, you will finally be able to purchase both print and ebook copies on August 15th, 2016! 

Cover Art by Carolyn Hausladen

 Daphne Woodhouse jumps at the chance to join her college’s study abroad program at a Parisian convent. Although thrilled to immerse herself in French Art and History, she soon finds herself drawn into a hidden world of myths and legends come to life. There’s a mysterious nun guarding the convent’s secret garden, a glamorous nightclub owner soliciting Daphne’s musical skills, something sinister stalking her in the shadows… and of course, the handsome and chivalrous Derek Moon, who is determined to win Daphne’s heart. When the fate of a magical species is laid in Daphne’s hands, she must make a choice that will change her future forever.

Some of you may recall that I was originally slotted to release this book as part of a multi-author YA series for Chesterton Press. As matters progressed, it became clear that it would make the most financial sense for both parties if I were to edit out the series tie-in details and self-publish. I am grateful to CP for getting me started on the amazing adventure of telling this story, and I can’t wait to share it with all of you!

Check out the new Geek Haus Press website and Facebook page, and sign up for our mailing list to be the first to learn ordering details!

Thank you for your support!

Elizabeth Amy Hajek

Jullian Fellowes presents "Doctor Thorne"

Upon finishing "Downton Abbey" this winter, the same question was on many minds: "What do we watch next?" Amazon, being the nifty business mind that it is, anticipated this and swiftly contracted "Downton Abbey" writer Julian Fellowes to write and oversee a 4-part adaptation of Anthony Trollope's "Doctor Thorne."

"Doctor Thorne" is deliberately filmed to envoke the "Good Old BBC Costume Drama" feel, while maintaining rather better quality. It is a delightful summer story, with conflict but no plot twists that could be deemed too distressing. Although a key plot point is the illegitimate birth of a central character, and although Amazon gave it a TV-14 rating, there really is nothing in the least objectionable about any part of this drama.

Indeed, it is great fun, with delicious eye candy in the form of costumes, setting and actors. And the actors do the piece justice, with Tom Hollander carrying the film's emotional center in the part of Doctor Thorne himself. Although most of us will remember Hollander as Mr. Collins from "Pride and Prejudice" or his villainous turn in "Pirates of the Caribbean", there is no doubt that he is superbly cast here (no surprise, as it is a fairly common truth that the actors who often play villains are typically extremely kind and lovely people IRL).

The talented Ian McShane plays a pivotal role reminiscent of Dickens, and Alison Brie ("Community") is charming in the supporting role of a highly sought after American Heiress. But equally delightful are the relative unknowns cast as the young people in this drama, and roles which could have taken an overly-dramatic stock character route are consistently lent gravitas and depth.

Although the end of the story is most predictable, the execution is done so well that the viewer is not likely to mind. I finished the four installments FAR too quickly, ending with great laughter and wishing that Amazon and Fellowes will reuinite in the near future to adapt another Trollope work. In the meantime I may just have to investigate the original works of this prolific author myself!

"Doctor Thorne" is an Amazon exclusive, free for Prime Members. If you don't have Prime, this may be a good incentive to take advantage of their free monthly trial for their video-only streaming service

While Beauty Slept - A Historical Sleeping Beauty

I love fairy tale retellings. And while "Beauty and the Beast" and "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" might be my favorites, I also have a certain personal connection to "Sleeping Beauty." Between my childhood illustrated version of the tale in sign language, the interest in spinning wheels it sparked in me, and connecting to Beauty herself in several ways (long awaited child, my health causing me to sleep so much, etc), it is the tale I perhaps most identify with. Not to mention that Regina Doman's "Waking Rose" is my all time favorite book, and Orson Scott Card's "Enchantment" is quite possibly in my top twenty.

I have previously wondered how any fairy tale might have origins in history (something that I discuss in "The Mermaid and the Unicorn") but until now, I have not found a version of Sleeping Beauty that took this premise seriously. "While Beauty Slept" may not be set in real history, but it functions as such. There is no magic confirmed in the tale, and historical Christianity is real. You can mentally choose to set the story in France, England, Germany, or any Northern European country of your choice.

For "While Beauty Slept" by Elizabeth Blackwell is the tale of the Sleeping Beauty as told by her mother's waiting-maid, a smart young woman of modesty and integrity named Elise. Elise is connected to the royal palace by blood and by history, but she makes her own mark on the royal family through her own virtues.

Disney's Maleficent is here transformed to Millicent - a woman with ties to witchcraft (although no magic is ever confirmed. You can choose whether to believe science or dark spiritual forces, in true historical faction).

I will caution younger readers against this book. Although Elise is conservative and virtuous, there are scenes of sensuality and a couple with married sex. I thought they were well written, but they're definitely in there, so if you're not comfortable with such, pass this book by.

Anyhow, if you're looking for a good adult fairy tale retelling, I'd recommend this one as a good read. It's longer than it looks - the pages are VERY thin.

May 2016 at Hajek Casita Amarilla

I've been doing a lot of reviews lately, so I figured it was time for an update post. At the moment I'm receiving back notes on "The Mermaid and the Unicorn" from my beta readers and Nathan and I are implementing them. Hoping to have a book release date VERY soon! Just waiting for the cover to get completed!

As you may have noticed, our Star Wars Role Playing Group is pretty big in our lives right now. I tend to get headaches when I leave the house, so we try to do as much at home as we can. The RPG group is my main social time right now. My hands go up and down. I'm working on some art commissions, and I also did a couple just-for-fun pieces based on RPG stuff. Above is a scene from a recent caper our group completed, and features my character and Nathan's character having their first kiss (it was a decoy, actually, but something's brewing...)

Also, Mateo is almost 7 weeks old! He will come home in about two weeks and I am eagerly counting down the days!

Nathan captured this photo on Wednesday. Mateo had just woken up from a nap so he was fairly calm, and was making intense eye contact that he had not previously be capable of/interested in. It was a very cool moment!

 

I was having a bad day, so puppy therapy was a big blessing. The owner of Mateo's mom has been tremendously supportive of allowing me to visit Mateo just about every week for the past month, and I am so very grateful! We're hoping it will help make the transition to our house easier.

Meanwhile, back at the farm... temporary laundry line has been doing it's job, but our neighbor just delivered the property's original laundry pole which was super nice of him because it had been given to him by the previous owner and he totally could have kept it. We're thrilled we don't have to go buy one, and are planning to set it up soon, so we can have our trees back for hammock use.

We also painted our living room! I had a really good day when I was actually able to help Nathan paint, which normally doesn't work because I react to paint fumes. So that was a blessing! More photos to come, once we get our new futon.

My experiment for the past month has been Gluten Free Sourdough starter - and after a month of careful tending, we have a really good batch that makes the most delicious bread! It took a lot of trail and error to get the right ratios and baking temps and times, but I'm thrilled with where we are currently at! So yummy!

We also built a bookcase.

I detest closet doors, so we took off almost all of them in our house. We realized they were the perfect length for the built-in bookshelf we'd been talking about, so we just added some bricks for center strength and a few brackets on the side and we now have a lovely bookshelf in our basement book nook!

Our rosebush bloomed. And then yesterday Home Depot was selling rosebushes for 50% off, so I got ANOTHER rose bush so I could have red roses in the backyard.

Here's a look at our lawn last week. It's not a great picture of the garden, I'll hopefully get some more of those soon. We put in two more garden beds today... we're very excited to grow as much of our own produce as possible this year!

 

It's been a rough week and I've been having to use Excedrin to keep my headache at bay, which I don't like (it's hard on my liver, which already has problems). BUT yesterday it allowed us to run an errand, and I planted my new rosebush. So that felt satisfying.

Remember those two new garden beds I mentioned? We did buy some peat/compost/soil... but it wasn't enough. We didn't want to go buy more, and we'd been talking about leveling out the hump in the center of our lawn, so we dug up some sections, removed the bottom dirt, and put the grass back down. Seems to have worked just fine.

So that's what's been happening around here. I've also been completing some more sewing projects, but you can read about them over at Seamstress Confessions if you're interested.

YOU could be on the cover of your favorite classic book!

Have you ever wanted to own a book with yourself (or a loved one) on the cover? Now, through Rivershore Book's new service, you can choose from a variety of public domain classics and send in a photo for Jansina to format into your UNIQUE cover!

How awesome is that?

Okay, I'm a little biased about this because it's based on an idea my dad came up with awhile ago. I realized that I wasn't ever going to be interested in offering the service myself, but that Jansina would be the perfect fit to execute the idea! (And the better Jansina's publishing business does, the more time she has to come and be my writing buddy, so it works out well for me too). 

Anyhow, I'm still deciding which classics to do a proper photoshoot for, but in the meantime you can see one of my previous photoshoot photos on the cover of Pride and Prejudice!

I think this would be a great gift to give any lover of the classics, but particularly anyone who has recently participated in a theatrical production of a classic or written a dissertation on a classic or has a collection of historical costumes that they love to put to good use. 

Many theater groups purchase commemorative t-shirts for a production, but I can't help but think that a copy of the book for everyone with a cast photo on it would be a cool memento as well. Jansina's pricing is pretty comparable to the t-shirts - $25 for the first book, and then $10 for any copy with that same cover after that.

Order Here.

Want to read some Star Wars fan fiction?

Neomara Zareal - Made with Dollmaker on Rinmaru Games with my edits

It doesn't star any big characters, but I think that it'll spark the interest of some of you Star Wars fans. It has been a couple of years since I published any fanfiction, but I've got something new to share at last! This is a piece I originally did for our Star Wars RPG, and Avellina was kind enough to express an interest in publishing it over at The Fellowship of The King. I am excited to have my first piece appearing there, and hopefully it catches the interest of some readers. I had a lot of fun playing in the Star Wars "Sandbox".

Nadesh Zareal - created on Rinmaru Games

It works as a stand-alone piece (and I clarify a couple things up front), so if you've seen the Star Wars movies, you should have no trouble picking this up and understanding it. 

Lowen Aanowen - Created on Rinmaru Games by my friend Anthony

Read and Enjoy: Darkness in the Stars

OUAT Season 5 wraps up - finally I discuss!

It took me over a week to sum up my thoughts on the ending of OUAT season 5. That's not a great sign, I'll admit. But oh well, at least most of you will have had time to catch up!

Spoilers after the photo.

Well, I was underwhelmed by this finale. Probably because it felt less like a finale and more like a 'bridging seasons made-for-tv movie.' IMHO, they should have held off on defeating Hades until the finale. Killing him two episodes before the end made the whole half-season battling him seem... insignificant. As though all we were doing was marking time until they could get to the story they really wanted to tell - in the Land of Untold Stories.

OR at the very least, they should have ended with Henry destroying magic. That was a BIG MAJOR happening, and ought to have been more than a minor hiccup, fixed by a cheesy speech scene. I get that they were trying to give Henry a big moment, but it would have worked so much better if he had destroyed magic right after Hyde landed in Storybrooke. Possibly even with the Charmings and co. still trapped in the Land of Untold Stories.

I know some fans are excited about all the new stories to appear on screen in the new season. I'm not so thrilled. They've skimmed or skipped a lot of key fairy tales (We've never seen Tiana, Aladdin or Jasmine on screen, Rapunzel was a minor episode and a major let down, Cinderella has hardly been utilized, Aurora and Ariel have plenty more that could be done with their stories, and that's only mentioning the big Disney names - there is so much they could do with tales like The Twelve Dancing Princesses, the Goose Girl, East of the Sun and West of the Moon, etc).

Sure, Neverland was well explored and Arendelle got a whole half season (which was too much for a lot of fans). Oz keeps popping back up, so we get more and more of that world all the time... but things were less developed in Camelot, with only 5 named characters and very little connection to the original legends. And the Greek Myths? Of the half season designated for them we got... the Underworld, lots of Hades (with a let-down ending), one Hercules episode (with a dash of Meg), and a single scene from Zeus. And that's it. So IMHO, there's no need to bring in even more characters yet, when they're not fully using the opportunities they've already got.

Sure, it'd be fun to see how our heroes interact with the Three Musketeers, Sherlock Holmes or Dracula. There's a lot of wealth there. I'm just not confident that OUAT will actually give us the stories we want, and it'll be more of a let-down.

You all know how I love this show, and that I have a lot of grace for them because it doesn't have to be amazing to be enjoyable. But I still think this direction was a disappointing choice. Now, they could prove me wrong and pull off some stellar episodes. Dr. Hyde was well set-up, and the dual Reginas will be VERY interesting to watch.

But I'm not getting my hopes up.

To end this 'rant' on a more positive note, I squealed when we got the "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" mention. I have a deep affection for that book, and I dearly hope that we get to see a bit more of that backstory play out.

Now the Hollywood Reporter asks 12 questions, and I have a few thoughts on a couple of those to share.

6. How does the Evil Queen survive without a heart?
I am pretty sure that the Evil Queen is sharing 'Real' Regina's actual heart, just as the Charmings share theirs, and Emma wanted to share hers.

10. Is there a chance for Robin Hood to pop up in Storybrooke again?
Robin wasn't just killed - he was erased from existance. Hades was pretty clear that if you got zapped by the Crystal, you didn't get an afterlife. For Robin to return, I'm fairly certain it will require Time Travel (which would be an easy way to get a return of Hades later on.)

11. Will the Underworld be revisited with King Arthur in charge?
His story is clearly wrapped up for now - BUT we definitely could see him again, at least in Flashbacks. OUAT loves bringing people back, after all. I'd really love to see what happens to Guinevere and Lancelot next, however, so I hope they aren't just forgotten.

If you want to know more about what is coming up next for our heroes, you can check out the following article.
http://www.fashionnstyle.com/articles/85334/20160524/once-upon-a-time-season-6-spoilers-maleficent-and-lily-slated-to-return.htm