As of today, December 16, 2019, the paperback version of This Glass Heart has been published and the ebook version is due to go live in less than nine hours.
So basically, I’m a little overdue on writing a blog post about what this book is about.
This Glass Heart is the second book in my fairy tale novella series, Recovering Happily Ever After. This one is a Cinderella retelling. And in case you haven’t read up on Book One yet, this series focuses on characters and their loved ones figuring out how to deal with depression. (Psst. You can read up on That Prince Guy here.)
In That Prince Guy, an enchanter named Jadon helped Prince Guy and Princess Gabby escape from and eventually confront Gabby’s stepmother, the evil sorceress. As This Glass Heart begins, Guy and Gabby have ditched Jadon at Guy’s castle, where the enchanter has vowed to protect Guy’s family should the evil sorceress come after them. The story’s point of view characters are Guy’s sister, Dianne, and her love interest, Salvador.
This book isn’t quite as wacky as That Prince Guy, nor is it half as sarcastic, but it still has it quirks. Dianne is an awkward, oversensitive princess whose obsession with cats trumps her people skills. That’s the basis of her struggle with depression. She can’t decide whether she’d rather spend the rest of her life surrounded by cats or if it’s worth the effort to try to get along with the people around her. After all, she’s awkward and oversensitive. She always puts the wrong words together. Every social encounter is an embarrassment to mull over for days or weeks or years. And the people around her aren’t exactly watching every word that comes out of their mouths, either. Are they trying to offend her? Are they insinuating anything? Or is she just reading too much into it? More often than not, Dianne feels like it would be easier to just give up.
Salvador has never experienced depression, and he doesn’t understand why Dianne gets so worked up about everything. But, he’s willing to listen to her point of view and help her develop the strengths she lacks. Learning to engage with others is the first and most crucial step Dianne can take in healing from years of chronic depression, and she’s no longer alone in doing it.
Of course, it isn’t all tea and pleasant conversation. The evil sorceress could be nearby, and Jadon hasn’t done anything about her yet. Dianne doesn’t even know what to think. And Salvador has a secret. By the time the clock strikes midnight on the last night of the ball, Dianne will have some big decisions to make, and Salvador has a duty to protect those he cares about.
You can purchase This Glass Heart here.
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A little on the crafting side of this book, this one was much, much harder to write than That Prince Guy. I wrote That Prince Guy in five days. It was a piece of cake. I enjoyed almost every minute of it. It was a fun book. This Glass Heart was torture. It took me fifteen days, and the only reason I got those 30,000 words written so quickly was because I’d dedicated myself to writing both this book and the third one during NaNoWriMo. I had to write 2,000 words a day to stay on track. Not that I succeeded. I did win NaNoWriMo, but I didn’t write anything worth keeping in the final draft of the third book. Indeed, I’ve started it over several times and I’m only on Chapter 2 as of a couple days ago.
That Prince Guy could be described as an adventure comedy. This Glass Heart is more of a mystery drama. There’s still some humor, the characters are still realistic and relatable, but the focus is on uncovering the mysteries of Seren and the sorcerer who cursed Guy in the first place. The stakes aren’t as high for the main characters, though they do take risks. The main characters themselves aren’t funny. I just have to say, I personally don’t like this book. I think I did a good job with it. I did what I needed to. But if I were to rank all five books in the series by my favorite, this one would be at the bottom of the list.
I mean, it had to be one of them.
The fact that I don’t like it doesn’t mean anything for my readers. Really, it doesn’t. In the first book, the excitement was in the action. In this one, the excitement is mostly in the answers they uncover. I didn’t know how the action was going to play out in That Prince Guy, but I already knew most of the answers I was going to reveal in This Glass Heart. When it comes down to it, that’s probably most of my issue with this sequel. It wasn’t as exciting for me to write. I didn’t get the experience of reading/writing cool new plot reveals because they weren’t new for me.
For the most part, the rest of the main characters in this series will be at least as unpredictable as Guy and Gabby. Some of them, anyway. Book 3, These Extraordinary Thorns, is my very favorite of them all. I mean, so far. I’ve never written Book 4 or Book 5. Those could both be really, really cool. The main character in Book 4 doesn’t get a love interest, and he has a dark sense of humor and swears a lot. (There will be no actual swear words in the book. I’ll be ‘editing’ all of his swear words to say [REDACTED]. I know that’s a weird thing to do for a book, but this is such a quirky series, it totally works.) In Book 5, the main character has a lot going on, but each of the other seven chapters will take turns telling the point-of-view of all seven of the point-of-view characters from the earlier books.
So, Book 2 is done. It’s published. And now I get to work on my very favorite book of the whole series. I’m excited. And my Recovering Happily Ever After series is only going to continue to get more exciting.
Mariah K. Porter 