You can’t just write a novel once—I can’t, anyways. It takes a whole lot of removing and rewriting and editing, especially if one wants one’s book to be a decent one. I wrote almost two whole drafts for Genevieve of Alea, but within that some sections saw more drafts than others. Chapter One was one of these sections, counting four drafts altogether. This is Chapter One, Draft One, written over April 14-22 of 2016. Some of it is surprisingly good, surprisingly to me anyways. You’ll notice that some of the book blurb is from this. However, it’s also very bad! I’ll just note that my heroine does now enjoy dancing; and that I would rather you read the final Chapter One to decide if you want to read this, than the other way around.
My great grandmothers are named Isabella, Eleanor, Dawn and Rapunzel – but you might know them better as Belle, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and, well, Rapunzel. Also, my Grandma Bianca is Snow White, and Grandma Adeline and my mother were the beauties of ten kingdoms. That honor now belongs to my eldest sister. All these fairytale heroines in my family may not seem like a bad deal at first glance, but all that princess-ness creates expectation that the daughters of the royal house will live up to their foremothers. It’s not like they’re long gone legends of centuries past, either – all of them are still alive, and have aged very well. In fact, they are all remarkably beautiful elderly ladies with personalities to be reckoned with. The lovely-princess expectation is not limited to a vague and indirect ‘society’; my mother and father, and grandmothers and grandfathers, and great grandmothers and grandfathers, and even my four sisters, all expect each of us young princesses to be models of royal perfection. I’m the only one left out in the cold.
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