Over the next 2 weeks you will hear about writing from a young age, prioritizing where to put the money you do have when starting out, what to do about reviews, learning the language of books, and dealing with family and friends reading your books.

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Dallas 's Facebook page - @dallasryanwrites on Instagram - @DallasRyan22 on Twitter - Dallas Ryan on TikTok

Nurse and TX native now enjoying lake life in VA. Mom to 2 kids and 5 dogs. Margarita snob. Only likes Moscato. Always had a dream to write a book and now I’ve published two and working on the next 2!

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Welcome to Freya's Fairy Tales, where we believe fairy tales are both stories we enjoyed as children and something that we can achieve ourselves.

Each week, we will talk to authors about their favorite fairy tales when they were kids and their adventure to holding their very own fairy tale in their hands.

At the end of each episode, we will finish off with the fairy tale or short story right as close to the original author's version as possible.

I am your host.

Freya victoria I'm an audiobook narrator that loves reading fairy tales, novels and bringing stories to life through narration.

I'm also fascinated by talking to authors and learning about their why and how for creating their stories.

We have included all of the links for today's author and our show in the show notes, today is part one of two where we are talking to Dallas Ryan about her novels.

Over the next two weeks, you will hear about writing from a young age prioritizing where to put the money you do have when starting out, what to do about reviews, learning the language of books and dealing with family and friends.

Reading your books unbroken.

Book two of the Gladwater series.

Once charmed by a small town girl, a big city doctor doesn't stand a chance.

Attraction sizzles hotter than a skillet, but trouble from his past could put their love and her life at risk.

Cafe owner Maggie Wade has a magic touch when it comes to her business and caring for her friends.

Her own love life, that's where she falters.

Thanks to an incident long ago that shattered her selfimage.

Then Dr.

Zane Savage comes to town.

The handsome Dallas neurologist can't seem to take his warm whisky eyes off her.

Their attraction sizzles.

But Maggie's been burned before.

Ever since, she's kept her heart away from all sources of heat.

Zane existed on a steady diet of Barbie doll types plastic temporary disposable until he meets Maggie.

One taste of her sweet smile, sparkling brown eyes and warm personality, and he's a goner.

So what if he's been a player in the past?

Maggie makes him want to be a better man.

Despite the distance between them.

Their relationship takes flight and Maggie's new found confident sores.

But when a piece of trash from Zayn's past blows back into his life and refuses to be shaken off, the strain puts more than Maggie's trust at risk.

It puts her life in danger.

So the podcast is Freya's Fairytales and it is fairytales two ways.

So all of us as kids, either watched or listened to or read fairy tales and short stories when we were kids.

And then also the journey of you spending weeks, months, years working on your books to finally get to hold them in your hands is a sort of fairy tale for the author, for you guys as well.

So I like to start off with what was your favorite fairy tale or short story when you were a kid and did that favorite change over time?

Probably my favorite when I was a kid was Cinderella.

Okay.

Because you got the fancy dresses and Prince Charming, and you got to do bad things to the bad people.

At the end, they got their come up, which I like.

And when my kids were kids, we went through the whole Disney princesses library, and I think my favorite there was Milan.

Okay.

Because I loved her, she got to be the badass and take on the thing.

So that was probably my favorite when my kids were going through the ones we saw them.

And so at what age did you know you wanted to try your hand at writing?

I've always written as long as I can remember I've written, especially in high school, I took a creative writing class and really took off there, and I wrote through college and ever published anything.

Right.

I do have a paper, though, when I was in nursing school, that I had to take a class for extra credit because I didn't have enough credit because it was a second degree, so I had to make up.

So I took a class, and I had the professor, one of the English professors, they got shared with him for some reason, and he wanted my permission to use it in his writing class.

And so that was, like, my first oh, I actually write something that somebody likes to write something good, but then after that, it just kind of life got in the way after that.

Suck all the creativity out of your brain.

So I just picked it up again last year, and it's just gone crazy.

And so how long did it take you to write once you sat down to actually write your first book last year, how long did it take you to write it?

Three and a half months.

Four months.

Okay.

To write the first one, I don't know.

It's like something went off in my brain and just started gushing out of there for so many years and not using any of my creative writing abilities, and it just started flowing.

So I got that done, and thank God I found a really good developmental editor, because my first book, I was, like, the queen of flashback, and it probably would not have come back out as well if I didn't have her.

But once I got that going, and she helped me kind of organize my thoughts better, the second one I did just about three months after that.

So now the third one is a little bit slower.

I don't know.

It may not be slower by the time I get done with it, but I feel like I'm struggling a little more with it.

Okay, so you knew enough at the beginning to know I need to have editors look at this, not just publish it right away.

Yeah, because I was reading it and going, okay, I need this here, but that is too much.

And I do another flashback.

I'm like, okay, the pulp can't be flashback.

We may as well send it back in time.

Yeah.

I was like, this is a problem.

So I thought, well, maybe I'll check it out and see if it's worth my time, because I've been reading started reading some indie stuff, just barely dipping my toe in that I didn't at the time I was doing.

I didn't know whether I wanted to be published or published with a traditional publisher.

I didn't know anything.

I was just writing this thing and going, okay, right.

My brain just won't focus.

And so I found my editor clever editors, and she went through it and just amazing things and helped me organize my brain a little better.

And since she did that, it kind of now stayed in that mode.

I kind of keep it flowing instead of doing it as a flashback.

So it was definitely worth the money.

That's the biggest thing that's been worth the money is getting tested.

Okay, now, did you do your own book covers or did you have someone design those as well?

I did them through getcovers.com.

They're actually out of Ukraine and they've been amazing.

Even with all everything that's going on over there, I mean, they're still the customer service is just ridiculous.

And I'm like, how are you doing this year in the middle of a war?

And they're still getting back to me in email.

Y'all, just relax, don't freak out if I don't hear from you.

I'll be patient, I promise.

But it stops photos and then they dress it up and do the design and everything.

I had them do the first one and I was happy with how it came out, having them do the next two just to make sure they're cohesive here.

Yeah, I've got a lot of compliments on them and they've done a really good job on a budget, which is also a good thing for us.

We have no money, despite what everybody thinks.

We're not all best sellers right out of the gate.

That's why I always joke I'm building my writing empire one penny at a time on Kindle Unlimited.

I don't think anybody except people that were famous before they started writing books, I don't think anybody is famous right out of the gate.

They all start as even if you get a publisher, they're all going to start as nobody that then people may pick up and find them.

But obviously the more advertising dollars you have behind you, the faster that will happen.

Yeah, so many of us don't have that budget.

You have to kind of go, okay, so I want my book to be edited properly and actually be able to people to read it.

Right.

Or I want people to read it, so I need to advertise it, but I don't want them to read it and then not be good, right?

So at this point, I'm kind of going, okay, I want my stuff to be done right, and I don't want it to look like I just threw it together in my basement overnight.

I want it to look professional, right?

So eventually people will read that, write it, and they will come, right?

If you don't write it, there's no way for them to come.

For audiobook auditions, I'm like, you get exactly 0% of the auditions you don't do.

Right?

I may sit there and acquire 20 auditions throughout the week, but if I never submit an audition, I probably won't ever land the book.

Exactly.

That's what people always ask, what's your best advice for new authors and stuff?

And I'm like, just write it.

Yeah, just keep writing.

Sometimes I'll write a page and I'll think it's crap, but at least it's words on the page and it's something you can work with versus a blank page staring at it.

Yeah, I've done.

Like, you had been trying to write forever, but not necessarily the kid.

I don't think the kid is what stifled my brain, but just couldn't come up with an idea that would go like, I could get any actual book content out of it.

It would be like a chapter, maybe two, usually just a couple of paragraphs, and then it's like and now that idea is done.

I've had several of those, too.

I've got eight things working on Atticus that I'll do, like, three or four chapters and go, oh, man, that's really good.

I should finish this.

And then I've got nothing, and I'm a total cancer.

I don't outline.

I can't outline.

I've never been able to.

Even in school, I tell my teachers, okay, I'll give you an outline because I'm required to get you an outline, but it's not going to be anything like what it comes out to be.

Yes.

I admire people that can do that and be organized that way and know their whole story arc and everything that's going to happen.

I don't I just have to wait for the characters to tell me what's going to happen.

Yeah, I have, like, too often they're just shut up.

Shut up.

Yeah.

So I have one book where in my head, I know where I want the book to eventually go, but that's about the plan.

I know the major things that are going to happen, and that's it.

And then I have another one that I'm doing kind of a mythology retelling.

And so I want to hit, like, the major.

But again, it'll be this is going to be the major thing.

We're going to rewrite in this book, and the rest of the book won't be planned out.

I don't know if you've seen Jason Durrow on TikTok talk about his, but he plans down to scene by scene.

Oh, yeah, people do that.

And I'm like, I don't know how you do that.

I don't know how people's brains work to do that.

But yeah, I don't know when I started Collide, which is the first book, I don't even remember how I started it.

I mean, I started it with a particular scene.

I take that back.

I started with a particular scene, but I don't know where it came from.

But it just started with a scene in which that scene ended up being the middle of the book eventually.

But that's where I started it, and then I wrote it.

I really wanted to start out writing, which I'm going to do one of these days when I'm not working full time on top of this writing more of a history fiction about my great grandmother.

He lives in East Texas, and actually the town I use for Gladewateries that I'm writing there is an actual Gladewater, Texas, but technically that's not the town that I'm using that I'm describing because the town I'm using is actually Curn, Texas.

But currency doesn't sound as pretty as Blade water.

No.

I use Glade water, and my mom was born there, so.

As one can yes.

So there is actually pleaded water, but the town currently is where my great grandmother lives.

And the house that my main character Danny in the first book remodeled was my grandmother's house.

So everything I used in there is from my memories, from those places.

My aunt and uncle ran the general store, so everything is pretty real to a point in the description.

The names are all changed to protect the innocent.

But the place is the place.

It was a real place.

And I always wanted to write my great grandmother's story because she led it this amazing life, like back in the early 19,000.

And I remember her.

She didn't die.

She was 98 and she died.

I knew her growing up, and we go there every summer and I hear all these stories about her, and one of these days when I have time to do the history part of it justice, because I want to get the history part right as well.

If I'm going to do historical fiction, I'm going to sit down and write that story based on her.

But that's kind of what I started out.

I thought, well, I want to write something East Texas and around Big Mama's place, and that's kind of where I got the location, but yeah, but the houses are family.

You very much took from real life for all of your stuff, the background.

Yeah, I did.

A lot of the names I used are family names.

They're not the particular family member that they belong to.

You got to change them around.

Yeah.

How do you find your name?

I don't know.

I just my family names or friends names, I just don't make them that character.

Right.

So I just drag a name out.

Ideally someone from the past, although there's some weird names in the past, so you might end up with a book of a bunch of really old fashioned names.

Yeah, one of the characters named Houston, which was my grandfather's name and uncle's name in the book.

But I thought that it's just an interesting name.

I got to throw that in there.

I plan on for the Greek mythology, we're going to modernize.

So take like Z from Zeus and use a more modern Z name.

Do that.

Haven't come up with any of them yet, but that's the plane.

The main character is Dane, so I took that one.

You can't have that one yet.

Zeek is the one that keeps sticking in my head.

But then I was also thinking maybe we could use I talked to an author a couple of weeks ago that said she like posted on TikTok asking for name suggestions.

I'm like, that's a good idea.

Like, hey, I need a name that starts with whatever.

And it's going to be since it'll be mythology base like this, people will know the main names.

I need a replacement name for Zeus or Poseidon or whatever.

Yeah, you got to have them make them be that kind of strong name.

Yeah, exactly.

That matches the character exactly.

Yeah, that's kind of the plan.

We'll see what happens.

I'm still in the reading through the mythology sources first so that I know what I'm doing.

Yes.

I went into a deep Viking dive for a while because I have a story that one of those sites started that they're sitting there.

Yeah, that's a whole okay, don't laugh because it's like really well, it's like a Viking wolf shifter.

Time travel.

That sounds.

Intense.

It's turned out pretty good.

I got some good stuff going on it.

But then I'm like, I really need to be right stuff that I have to get out for the series.

Finish one before you do something.

Finish one.

Yeah, that never happened.

But when you wait on your characters to tell you what's going to happen and they don't talk to you, I'm going, okay, so I need to do something just to keep the juices flowing.

Right.

So I'll start something else, which is some of these weird things come to be.

But like right now I've got two series.

I've got the third in the Gladewater series I'm writing, and I'm simultaneously writing the first book in a new series called the Savannah Sisters series based in Savannah, Georgia.

And so they're about almost exactly even.

I've got about the same amount of work in each one.

So it's kind of I get stuck in one and JT and Sophia are being stubborn and not talking to me.

So then I go and work on Harper and Wick for awhile and see what they have to say.

I'm hoping to get the other one jealous, so they'll talk to me.

I'm sticking to it.

I was working on a fantasy somewhat set in the future, like 1015 years in the future, so not terribly far.

I was working on that and then over my anniversary weekend in March, me and my husband were talking about something else and I'm like, oh, I want to do this mythology thing instead.

But I've been trying to like as I do more research on mythology, I'm trying to figure out what exactly first it was.

Oh, we're going to have it be all the mythologies are going to be all happening at the same time in this one series.

And then I'm like, I don't mind a lot of work, but that's a lot for one series.

So I'm like, all right, so we're going to do like the mythology I can find the most on is Greek.

So we're going to be like, okay, the main series will be the Greek and then we'll do side series that are the other ones that it may be like some of the characters come into the different series, but that way I can get a couple Greek ones written and then start researching a different one to do that one.

I know there's always something.

I have a friend that she is crazy.

She has so many things going on, but she's got dates for I mean, I have dates in my head, but I'm like, okay, I'd like to have it done by this date, kind of what I want to oh yeah, at.

This point I'm like, this year'd be cool, but it'll probably be next year.

There is no set date.

Just like sometime.

Okay, it took me this long to write this one, so I should have this one out by such and such a date.

So I'm trying to do that.

And she's got dates for all these things, anthologies that she's in and blah, blah, blah, and all these different things that are not her dates or other people's dates.

She has due.

I thought you're nuts.

And I don't know how she keeps up with it all.

And then she comes up the other day, she said, oh, we went to see the Elvis movie and I thought about this new story about Elvis and this Elvis impersonator and Priscilla impersonator and I'm like, no, stop with the shiny object, squirrel, no more shiny objects.

I said, write it down and then put it away.

She got too many things.

She's like, I know, that's why I need you to tell me.

I got enough things.

I'm the same way.

But you see something oh, that makes a good story.

And I've got to where I'll make myself a note.

I keep my notes app on my phone all the time and stuff that will pop in my head and I'll write it down on the notes and just leave it there.

I kind of finished the theory, right?

So it took you three and a half months to write it and then it went to the developmental editor.

So how long from starting to write it to developmental editor?

To all the formatting and stuff.

How long was it to get all of it done and out and published?

We kind of go as I'm going.

So I'll give her pieces.

I may give her like the first book, I had her look at it like three different times as I was going through to kind of organize the second one, I only had her do it halfway through and then to make sure everything was cohesive.

It makes sense.

So really, once I get it back from her, then I have it copy, edited or proofread, make sure that still thing come and you find things right.

And I hope people are a little more forgiving because even if you've looked at this thing for 1000 times, it's been through professional copy editing and proofreaders and arc readers and still somebody will find something once you put it out.

And I'm like people.

Really?

I promise it was actually copy edited.

But yeah, probably four months maybe because usually I already have the cover done and I've got somebody that writes my blurbs because I cannot write a blurb to save my life because I want to write too much.

It's like I can't pull out quotes from the books.

Some people are so good at that.

They pull up quotes to put in Instagram posts or TikTok or whatever.

I'm so bad at that because I want to do like paragraphs.

I'm like, that doesn't make sense if you don't know.

Yeah, you need the background.

You need the background of it, everything.

So I'm really bad at that.

So I let somebody else do that for me.

But yeah, about four months in total because I'm kind of working on everything at the same time.

Okay, so that's not bad at all.

And they're about 300 pages as you go.

They're romance books.

Not to put down romance.

I write romance and I like romance, but it's not rocket science.

You're not having to sometimes I admire people that can write, really, this fantasy world building thing and just get really into it because I don't know.

I don't have at least not now, don't have that kind of imagination.

And I think that's going to take a long time to really develop world building.

I write contemporary, so I'm doing descriptions of places and things and stuff.

But I'm not build me.

I'm not building a whole world, right.

Because I'm not a real place in the background.

So I'm always in awe of people like that.

So you need a lot more traveling so you have more places to pull from.

I do, yeah.

Someday when my kids are out of the house, that's what I'm going to do.

Now, I did make my husband take me to Savannah because I woke up one morning with a series in my head, the whole series, and which tropes were going to be in which book.

And I came up with the name that morning at the sisters and who their love interests were going to be.

It was just bizarre.

I woke up with it.

And so I said, I've never been to Savannah.

Okay, we have to go to Savannah when we can because I actually kind of need to see the place before I start writing it.

And so we went to Savannah for a weekend and took pictures.

And so I go back to look at things and get the ambience going on.

Hey, I really want to describe this in my book.

Let's take a picture of it.

That's a cool tree.

I'm going to take a picture of that.

That's a cool fountain.

I like that fountain from square.

This is a book that's going to be based on it.

The house I'm going to put on.

So I needed something.

So we did that.

And then I've got a friend that just took a cruise to Norway last year.

And so she wants me to write a book based on a yarn shop owner in Norway because we are Yarnie people too.

I die yard and knitting.

I said, okay.

So she sent me a bunch of pictures from her trip to Norway.

So that's sitting in my phone waiting someday.

So when I get that done, when.

I have time, yeah, I get lots.

Of suggestions about she was here the other day.

And she's like, well, what are you going to start by?

Both about the yarn shop owner in Norway.

I said, it's in there.

I've got notes.

Just eventually it takes your time.

I got to finish these other things first.

Yes, I tried to do mine.

Of course.

I have full schedule of narrating.

So I'm trying to fit my research and stuff between I've got to have read the books that I narrate first.

So I have to make sure I'm reading those.

And then I have the actual time.

Narrating, that takes time.

And then the time editing, that takes time.

Usually weekends are my I do author interviews for this.

And usually I have like one or two each Saturday.

And then I'll do research.

Right now I'm just stuck in research for reading through all these things.

But eventually I'll be writing on the weekend.

Because I work full time and I'm a nurse and I'm on the road all the time for what I do.

So I can only write sometimes.

By the end of the day, your brain just doesn't have anything left in it.

And so you get do a lot of weekends.

Now I have to ask as a narrator, is there any plans for audiobooks on your series?

I would love to do audiobook, like everything.

And I was so excited you did those scenes for me on TikTok.

That was so exciting.

Couldn't stand it.

But yeah, I would love to have them married because I can hear them in my head.

Yeah, you got to work on that Texas accent.

So girl, you live there.

I do.

My Southern accent sounds more like Southern bell than it does Texas.

I'm like, I do a really good North Carolina.

Southern bell Accent But I've lived in Texas my whole life.

I know what to put that you need to go out and hang out in some diners or something.

I just don't hang around.

My family members that talk with accents.

Like, my parents, neither of them ever talked with a Texas accent.

My mom was a Navy brat, so she kind of got a mix of Everywhere's accent.

My dad, he lived in Texas his whole life.

I don't know why he never got an accent, but yeah, my parents just didn't.

Now some of their siblings do.

Yeah, you need to go hang with them for a while.

You got to have access.

And mine is all messed up because I grew up in Texas until I was, like, 20, so I grew up there.

And it's funny because then I moved all up, so it's kind of evened out a little bit.

But when I talk to relatives or something on the phone in five minutes, it's just right back yeah, right back in.

Yeah.

Let's see.

I did a very short novella that was she was a country singer in Tennessee.

And so it was part of not an anthology, but it was like a collection of this author's books in this series.

And so it was like, general American.

General American.

Southern general American.

Like, the actions that I had to use.

And I get to like, the Country Singer comes in, like, partway through the second of the four books, and I'm like, oh, no, I'm like, I can do it.

But it's not now.

It's a little bit better now that I've done.

And I don't know how you do, because I was listening to other stuff that you did.

But you do really good voices.

Yes.

As a woman, yeah, I tried, and I don't think I could do that.

My voice, I don't think it's low enough register.

I would sound like I was doing something weird if I tried to do I think it's just like, a lot.

Of narrators you'll hear are like they have acting backgrounds or they have other experience that is very good for making the switch over into audiobook narration.

I used to do skits and stuff in high school, but maybe once every couple of weeks.

It wasn't like a big like I never had to do some big stage production or anything like that.

So I'm like, I just do voices.

I don't know now.

About two or three months ago, I started doing singing lessons to help with making sure my voice could handle the switches between voices better.

But there's some voices that I use, like, the deepest mail voice I use.

It hurts my throat so much that I'm like, it has to be a minor character that gets that voice.

Yeah, because I'm.

Like, I can't maintain this for a whole book.

And you never know, too, because I listen to audiobooks all day long, right.

And it's funny because some men do pretty decent female voices that you don't go cringe when they do it.

Yes, some of them do.

You cringe a little bit, and it's the same backwards.

So I never know.

I'm going, well, do you want a male to do it and do the female voices or do the woman do it and do the male voices?

Yeah, and it's just like, I'm playing with this.

Like, I have money to do it, but these are the things I think about when I can get it done.

But yeah, if I listen to them all the time and you want it to be good, you want it to people that don't read read that listen to audio books all the time.

You want them to like your narrator, so then they want to read the get the next one.

Because now I've had very few.

I've had a couple of books from famous authors that I have just can't listen to the narrator voice is so greedy that I just can't listen to it, and I'll go, actually buy the book and read the book.

I had someone say that about my voice, like, in the last two weeks, I just couldn't stand the narrator's voice.

And I'm like, and gave me one star and, like, all this, and I'm like, but they worded it, so it was so mean the way that they worded it.

I'm like, you didn't like my voice.

You didn't have to be mean about it.

Well, they said something about the storytelling wasn't great or whatever.

Now, granted, this was, like one of the first five fiction audiobooks I had done, so I'm like I've improved a lot since.

I think I've improved a lot.

But it's not your storytelling anyway.

Yeah, well, I mean, part of it is the narrator.

There's actually narrators that do like, they don't do the character voices at all.

There are some authors that don't want the character, and there are some listeners that don't want the full stage production at all.

There's a lot of dialogue in the book.

I think I need the production well.

You'Ll know, based on yes.

You'll know, based on what audiobooks you like to listen to.

Because if you like the ones where the narrator is doing all the voices, that's probably what you're going to want for your own book and how it's written.

I mean, I can see some of the stuff you wouldn't need that certain book would require it.

Try not to show.

I tried to show, not tell.

Yeah, I don't think I could do a well, and of course, when I audition, I always have the voices and everything like that because that's what I'm used to doing.

So if I ever got one that was like, we don't want you to do that.

I'd be like, well, then you picked the wrong person because I don't know how to not do that now.

It was funny, though.

I had one audiobook, the trilogy I'm currently narrating.

The author was like, the publisher hired me.

The author was like, I don't know if I want to listen through it or not.

So I asked my husband.

It's a fantasy book, but the author writes very much like Sci-Fi.

The writing style is more Sci-Fi.

And my husband listens to a lot of Sci-Fi audiobooks.

So I'm like, can you please just listen through this and tell me, like, does it sound terrible or is it okay?

Because I don't know if this author is going to listen or not.

And I need someone besides just me to listen through this to make sure it's not crap.

So he's listening through, and he's like, wow.

Because it's fantasy, this author created a lot of there's, like two or 300 words he made up.

And so my husband said for all Sci-Fi and fantasy, both do that a lot.

There's a lot of made up words.

And he was like, yeah.

So as far as any book he's ever listened to, he's like, you're one of the best for making the made up words sound like part of the actual thing.

Sound like real words and make it sound natural.

He said sometimes when he hears, like, a made up word, the narrator will kind of, like, pause a little bit.

Yeah.

And it just sounds awkward in the text.

And he's like, you didn't do that.

I'm like, I worked very hard to make sure that it sounds natural.

It takes a lot longer to do it, though.

And how does the author not want to listen?

Well, he is really busy, and he's very particular.

So he was like, I don't want to listen, and then just be, like, upset because he doesn't like it.

Or he is listening through it now, but at the beginning, he was like, I don't know if I'm going to.

I'd be like, no, I want to listen to every single word.

Yeah, well, that's most do.

Most listen through it sometimes I obviously listen to it myself.

Some narrators hire, like, proofs and other stuff.

I do a lot of royalty share, so I don't pay out of my pocket for those things.

I listen through it myself, make sure it sounds like normal language talking.

But yeah, he is listening through it.

He just didn't and I've listened through it already.

But these made up words, sometimes I forget.

Oh, yeah, that's how it's pronounced.

Yeah.

Then you have to remember how to pronounce it the same.

That's what I always say, is when you read stuff and you have words or words you just don't know and you don't know how to pronounce, and then you go say something about it to somebody, and they're like, what?

I'm like, okay.

I don't know.

I know that word beans?

I never heard it said in real life.

Yeah, it's just a thing.

My worst one, it's like crazy made up words, but I like it.

Doing it was this lady who was writing, like, her life story basically in these books.

And so I'm narrating along and she comes back and she says, I think you said circumference wrong.

I'm like, really?

So I go look up, like, how is that word supposed to be said?

I've always said it.

Circumference.

Circumference.

Yeah.

I'm like I look it up and I'm like, oh.

And then my husband's like, how have you been saying that wrong?

I'm like, I've never heard it in real life.

Or maybe I heard it and just thought they were saying it wrong.

How often do you hear that word in real life?

Well, it catches you, too, when you're listening to British narrator oh, yeah.

And they're saying things like laboratory and what's the other one left?

Tenant.

That Lieutenant.

Yeah.

And so you just have to kind of that's something that just catches your ear, and I know that's what it is.

Okay.

It sounds so fancy in this one.

What's funny?

I've actually done two audiobooks by British authors who specifically didn't want a British accented.

Narrator even though some of the words, like I had torch or flashlight, so some of the words were the British words, but they're like, no, I want an American accent, not a British accent.

That's funny.

Yeah, I would want whatever.

I guess it depends on what the book where the book is set.

Both were fantasy, so one of them was set in Ireland, Scotland, England, like, it was in that general region, but she didn't want the accents.

And then the other one was, like, fantasy, so it didn't specify location at.

All.

Kind of thing.

I need to write something that in Scotland or Ireland so I can have it so much.

Yeah.

I'm starting to learn accents, but I decided to start with, like, Russian, which is probably one of the hardest ones.

I'm like, might as well start with the hardest one we can work with.

Well, I have one coming up, but the authors said I don't have to do the accents, but I'm going to try.

You need to go immerse yourself and your family for a couple of weekends and pick up that because what part of Texas are you in?

Dallas.

Oh, well, see, perfect, because that's where my family all is.

They got that East Texas thing going on.

I grew up in South Texas.

Ours is a little different with the Spanish influence.

Yeah, definitely.

Of course, in the third book that I'm writing now, I've got quite a bit of Spanish in it.

So I'm having one of my readers that helps me out speak Spanish, spanish speaking first language.

So I want to say something and I'll just send it to her and go, okay, because I've done google Translate, and that's not always working properly.

So I'll send it to her.

Okay, this is what I want to say.

You say that Spanish in the book, so, like, little short Snippets that I need, the family is Spanish speaking that I'm getting.

So, yeah, that's kind of fun, too.

I get to pull out that part of my background.

Yeah, and it's weird because I know words had to come up, words I heard my whole life, that I'll try to look up their spells because of Spanish, and I should have taken much more Spanish when I was in school instead of French, but I've heard it because I grew up in South Texas.

I heard it all my life, and I'll go like, the word miha, I looked up because I had friends that their mom's calling me how all the time.

And so I went and I typed it how I thought it was spelled, make sure I had the right definition, because I know how to use it, but I didn't want to do something weird, and it gave me this weird definition on Google, and I'm like, okay.

So then I had to go to my friend and go, okay, am I just losing my mind?

Am I not just spelling it wrong?

Or what's the deal that I've heard this my whole life as an endearment thing?

What is it?

Is this she's like, no, that's right.

I don't know why they're not there.

I'm like, thank God, because I've been using it for the whole thing.

I know I've heard it.

I said, I know some of my Spanish is Spanglish, because we got a lot of that, too.

But yes, I really try to make sure what I'm writing is correct.

Right.

And not just rant and things I'm making up as I go along.

Right.

Yeah, I know the Russian book author said that he did the Google Translate for some of his stuff, so I know I'm going to get some of that, and I got to read what's on the page.

Well, the hard part is having to.

Say, yeah, that's a problem.

Yeah, I did one that it was now, the translation would have been good because they were doing a quote from now, this would have been German, but they were doing a quote from Hitler.

So that would have been accurate because they would have just looked up him saying it or whatever.

But that was a nonfiction, and I don't remember why they were using a Hitler quote, but it made sense.

Yeah, but I had to look up how do you say this in German?

Yeah, it's one of my pet peeves.

And people read stuff that people are writing about.

For example, law enforcement.

My dad was a police, so I grew up in that world, and I'm a nurse, so I know the medical side of it.

I know, and I'll read stuff, and they obviously don't know what they're talking about, and the stuff they're saying doesn't make sense, and they've probably seen it on TV, and that's what they're basing it on.

So whenever I'm doing something like that, I always try really hard to do my research, and I don't know it personally and make sure I'm writing things that are accurate.

Ask somebody.

Make sure if I don't know it personally that I'm talking to somebody that does know it personally.

And then I.

Ask my husband, too.

That never happened.

Yeah, I asked my husband that, too, for narrating.

Like, I have one coming up where the guy is military, and so he answers the phone, and I'm like, how would he answer the phone?

Like, what would his cadence be when answering the phone, saying his rank and all of that?

So I'll ask my husband, like, how would that be said?

Yeah, I guess his stuff sounds dumb if you're just making it up as you go along.

Or they're talking something about somebody supposed to be military or police, and they're talking about a firearm and are shooting a gun until they've never shot a gun in their life.

Yeah.

I'm going, no, that's not how that works.

Or medical stuff.

I watch a TV.

Of course, they have consultants and things on TV.

They're supposed to catch these things.

But even so, you have to have dramatic license.

Stuff has to happen.

Yeah.

I think that was the biggest thing that hurt my feelings.

One of the the biggest thing to hurt my feelings was I got a woman that was reading my book, and she's very nice about it.

She wasn't ugly about it, but she sent me a message and said, I can't continue to read your book.

And I was like, oh, I'm sorry.

Why, if you don't mind my asking, what's the problem?

And she gave a couple of things, and one, it wasn't written in first person, okay?

None of my books are written in first person.

That's just not how I write.

And okay, whatever.

Some people don't, like, reflect it's not first person the problem.

Right.

But then it's like, I'm a nurse, and the medical stuff is not correct.

And I was going, what are you talking about?

She would never answer me exactly what she's talking about, which also drives me crazy.

It's like, I am a nurse.

I've been a nurse for 20 something years.

I've worked in the hospital.

I mean, I didn't put a whole lot it wasn't a lot of detail yeah.

What I was doing, because it was set the scene was set in the hospital, but it wasn't directly related to a story.

Yeah, she was working there.

So some of the stuff I took a little bit of license, but nothing dramatic in it, so that really hurt me.

Right.

But, yeah, that was the hardest review, I think.

And it wasn't an actual review.

She told me she didn't review it in person.

But I was like, yeah, I'm going to obsess about it as one does.

I'm going to obsess about that three star I wonder why I got that one three star review.

Yeah, I've had a couple of lower star reviews that they never left a review, and I'm like, but what did you not like about it?

Well, on audiobooks, you leave reviews on the overall book, the performance, and then the story itself.

So when I get low reviews, I'm like, but why?

Because I'm like, if it's something that legitimately, something beyond you don't like my voice, I can't change that.

But if it's something that I need coaching to fix, I would like to know that.

Yeah, but yeah, usually the bad reviews don't tell you why it's a bad one.

Was like it was a dual point of view, and they didn't like that I did both perspectives, and so they didn't like that I was the male voice and the female, like the male character.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, they didn't like that I did both perspectives, but it was a royalty share, so I would have had to have paid out of my pocket to pay a second person, which I'm not going to do.

So I'm like the author's choice, too.

Yeah.

And that particular author hired me to do, like, five books for her, and they were all dual point of view, so I'm like, clearly.

And that's the only person that's commented.

But they bought two of the books and commented on both of them that they didn't like the same exact thing you liked.

You buy the second one.

Exactly.

Now, it could have been they got, like, free codes or something.

I don't know for sure.

But I'm like, Why'd you listen to the second one if you didn't like the first one when you saw the.

Narrator is the same same author, same narrator, why don't you listen?

Yeah, when it's four stars, there's a lot of people that just don't like to leave five stars.

So, like, four star ones, I don't feel heard about that.

It's like three stars and below, I'm why?

Yeah, and then if they don't make any sense or they don't tell you, or they don't make sense, or they didn't like the one character, and I'm like, well, and the rest, that's what drove me.

I got one review that was she started out loving the book.

It was great, blah, blah, blah.

And then she hated the main character.

She thought something about her rubbed her wrong, but then she recommended the book, and I bet she still gave me three stars.

I'm like, okay, that doesn't make any sense.

I'm so confused.

I don't know what that is.

Yeah, I had one.

The same reviewer was like, oh, my gosh.

This one character's voice was just cringey.

It was the boss of the lady.

He's in it for one scene and literally says, like, five sentences.

That's in the whole book.

And they're like, oh, my gosh.

So, like, in the scene, he's firing her from her job.

So I gave him this annoying squeeze, high Pitched Metal voice.

Yeah, so he's not a good guy.

Like, all he does is fire her for being late for work.

That's all he does, the end.

So I'm like, whatever.

There's only so many voices one person.

Can make, especially that it's supposed to be a bad person anyway.

Dallas liked Cinderella when she was a kid the fancy dresses, Prince Charming, and the bad guys getting what they deserve.

Cinderella or The Little Glass Slipper is a folk tale with thousands of variants throughout the world.

The protagonist is a young woman living in forsaken circumstances that are suddenly changed to remarkable fortune with her ascension to the throne via marriage.

The story of Her Dopis, recounted by the Greek geographer Strabo sometime between around seven BC and Ad Two Three, about a Greek slave girl who marries the King of Egypt, is usually considered to be the earliest known variant of the Cinderella story.

The first literary European version of the story was published in Italy by Jean Batista Basil and his Pinta Moron in 1634.

The version that is now most widely known in the Englishspeaking world was published in French by Charles Perrault in Historians AO Contest du Tempest Passes in 1697.

Another version was later published by the Brothers Grimm in their folktale collection Grimm's Fairy Tales in 1812.

Although the story's title and main characters names change in different languages, in English language folklore, cinderella is an archetype name.

The word Cinderella has, by analogy, come to mean one whose attributes were unrecognized, one who unexpectedly achieves recognition or success after a period of obscurity and neglect.

The still popular story of Cinderella continues to influence popular culture internationally, lending plot elements, illusions and tropes to a wide variety of media.

Today we'll be reading about the Egyptian Cinderella.

Don't forget we're reading LeMorte de Arthur, the story of King Arthur and of his noble Knights of the Round Table on our patreon.

You can find the link in the show notes.

The Egyptian Cinderella long ago, in the ancient land of Egypt, where the green water of the Nile River flows into the blue water of the Mediterranean Sea, lived a young maiden named Radopus.

She was born in Greece, but had been kidnapped by pirates and carried to Egypt, where she was sold into slavery.

Her owner was a kind old man, and since he spent most of his time sleeping under a tree, he never saw how the other servant girls in the house taunted and teased Rhodopus because she looked different to them.

Their hair was straight and black, while hers was golden and curly.

They had brown eyes and hers were green.

Their skin had the glow of copper, but she had pale skin that burnt easily in the sun, so they called her Rosy Rhodopus.

They made her work hard, shouting at her all day go to the river and wash the clothes.

Mend my robe, chase the geese from the garden, bake the bread.

She had no human friends, only the animals.

She trained the birds to eat from her hand, a monkey to sit on her shoulder, and an old hippopotamus would slide up out of the mud onto the bank to be closer to her.

At the end of each day, if she wasn't too tired, she would go down to the river to be with her animal friends.

And if she had any energy left from the hard day's work, she would sing and dance for them.

One evening, as she was dancing, twirling around lighter than air with her feet barely touching the ground, the old man woke from his sleep and watched as she danced.

He admired her dancing and decided that one so talented should not be without shoes.

He ordered her a special pair of slippers.

The shoes were gilded with rose red gold and the soles were leather.

Now the other servant girls could really hate her, for they were jealous of her beautiful slippers.

One day, word arrived that the pharaoh was holding court in Memphis and all in the kingdom were invited.

Oh, how Radopus wanted to go with the other servant girls, for she knew there would be dancing, singing and lots of wonderful food.

As the other servant girls prepared to leave in their finest clothes, they turned to her and gave her more chores to be completed before they returned.

They pulled their raft away, leaving a sad girl on the bank.

As she began to wash the clothes in the river, she sang a sad little song wash the linen, weed the garden, grind the grain.

The hippopotamus grew tired of this little song and splashed back into the river.

The splashing of the water wet her slippers.

She quickly grabbed them up, wiped them off and placed them in the sun to dry.

As she was continuing with her chores, the sky darkened and when she looked up, she saw a falcon sleep down, s***** one of her slippers and fly away.

Rodopus was in awe, for she knew it was the god Horus who had taken her shoe.

Rodopus, now with only one slipper, put it away in her tunic.

Pharaoh, pharaoh of Upper and Lower Egypt, was sitting on his throne, looking out over the people and feeling very bored.

He much preferred to be riding across the desert in his chariot.

Suddenly, a falcon swooped down and dropped a rose red gold slipper in his lap.

Surprised, but knowing that this was a sign from the god Horus, he sent out a decree that all maidens in Egypt must try on the slipper, and the owner of the slipper would be his queen.

By the time the servant girls arrived, the celtbrations had ended and the pharaoh had left by chariot in search of the owner of the golden slipper.

After searching on land and not finding the owner, he called for his barge and began to travel the Nile, pulling into every landing so that maidens could try on the slipper.

As the barge rounded the bend in front of the home of her dopice, everyone heard the sound of the gong.

The trumpets blaring and saw the purple silk sails.

The servant girls ran to the landing to try on the shoe while Rodopus hid in the rushes.

When the servant girls saw the shoe, they recognized it as Rodopus's slipper, but they said nothing and still tried to force their feet into the slipper.

The Pharaoh spied Rodopus hiding in the rushes and asked her to try on the slipper.

She slid her tiny foot into the slipper and then pulled the other from her tunic.

Pharaoh pronounced that she would be his queen.

The servant girls cried out that she was a slave and not even Egyptian.

A Pharaoh responded with, she is the most Egyptian of all, for her eyes are as green as the Nile, her hair as feathery as papyrus, and her skin the pink of a lotus flower.

Thank you for joining Freya's fairy tales.