Shelby Bach Blog Tour: Exclusive Content from Madame Benne's Book

Shelby Bach is having a blog tour with never-before-seen content related to The Ever Afters series. So far, we've seen Lena and Chase's orientation letters, which included all the Tales that occurred within the last five generations in their family and a yummy recipe for Fey Fudge. Today, I'm very excited to be featuring a slightly singed page from Madame Benne's Book with an excerpt.  

From Madame Benne: Genius Inventor or Fey Traitor? - “Chapter 13: Her Legacy”

           Ultimately, Madame Benne's transgressions against the Fey—her own paternal
grandmother’s people—were forgotten. Most Fey who lived during that time have passed
from this world to the next, and even her remaining contemporaries have acknowledged
that she improved upon the secret magicks she stole from the Seelie court.
          Her inventions have changed forever the entire magical world, not only the
Characters she loved and the Fey she scorned. Rings of return—once an escape of last
resort due to their dangerous unpredictability—are now given to many young travelers of
magical descent so that they may have a quick return home. Magic mirrors have become
not just a standard issue in Characters' Tales but are now the main method of
communication between the monarchs of the Seelie and Unseelie courts. The Glass
Mountain Madame Benne used to capture Baba Yaga is now used on Atlantis as the only
prison able to contain The Snow Queen, the most powerful and dangerous sorceress in
history.
         With these advancements alone, the legacy of Madame Benne is assured, but the
great tragedy is what magical items we may have lost. As we have discussed in previous
chapters, Madame Benne was a very controversial figure in her lifetime.  Even at her
death in 1203 A.D., the scope and magnitude of her inventions were far eclipsed by the
scandal of a lone individual creating new magical items outside the royal Fey guilds.
Several generations passed before her genius was recognized.  As a result, some of her advancements were willfully ignored at the end of her life.  The magical mirrors created by Madame Benne herself are still considered to have the best quality and to be the most precious, as no one has successfully recreated her formula.  The "golden apples" that keep the Canon from aging are closely guarded; without Madame Benne’s records, Characters have never successfully duplicated them.  The Glass Mountain, though rumored to have been remodeled by its current occupant, has not revealed half its secrets in the nine and half centuries since Madame Benne crafted it.
         We are not without hope however.  Legend has it that Madame Benne preserved
her knowledge in two items: her spell book—described by her contemporaries as having
a wooden cover, painted gold and marked by her symbol—passed through many hands
after it was stolen from her descendants. It was last seen in the hands of the gnome
magician, Calicaei, in the seventeenth century.  The golden harp, the first of its kind,
invented by Madame Benne for musical pleasure and relied on in later years as an
assistant, was once in the possession of the human Queen of England, Elizabeth I, also a
Character.  It famously passed from through royal and noble Character hands until it
vanished during the French Revolution. If these items can be recovered, Madame Benne's
full legacy can be restored.


Don’t forget to check out the rest of the Ever After Series Blog Tour Stops 

November 3 – Middle Grade Mafioso
November 4 – From the Mixed-Up Files
November 5 – Log Cabin Library
November 6 – Amanda K. Thompson Blog
November 7 – Novels, News, and Notes
November 8 – Green Bean Teen Queen

Shelby Bach was born in Houston, Texas and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, but while writing THE EVER AFTERS, she moved almost as many times as her main character. She came up with the idea for the series right before she left New York City, and she finished the first book, OF GIANTS AND ICE, in Montana—the second, OF WITCHES AND WIND, back in Charlotte. Driving up the West Coast to research the settings for the third book, OF SORCERY AND SNOW, Shelby fell in love with Portland, Oregon and settled there. She would love to set up a Door Trek system in her apartment to visit her family and friends around the country, but she makes due with much slower and less fictional transportation. These days, while finishing up the fourth and final book, she also works part time for a real-life afterschool program. It is strangely similar to the one where her stories are set—except the students study math instead of fairytales.