The Princess? …I Think Not! by Ashley Brooke Robbins Blog Tour, Guest Post & Giveaway! {Ends 7/7/22}

Book Details:

Princess? …I Think Not! (A Princess Series Novel)
by Ashley Brooke Robbins

Published by: Inkspell Publishing
Publication date: March 14th 2017
Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult

Book Description:

The Royal Family Just Got a Little Bigger….

My name’s Baily King and I’ve always considered myself different—liking dead roses, cemeteries, reading fully clothed in the bathtub, and howling at the moon whilst dancing naked under it. But, when my grandma, a woman I scarcely remember, comes for a visit, she opens her mouth and my weird world crashes down all over my combat-booted feet.

See, dear Gram is dying and wishes for me to accept my royal name. Turns out she finally left a small village south of Ireland—a village that her and her husband rule. Pfft. No pressure.

Bam, you’re a Princess. Wear your tiara and shut up.

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Where do you get the ideas from, when creating personalities for your characters? How to Make Your Characters Believable?

Looking back, I’ve realized some of the characters are aspects of me, parts of me that I’ve hidden away.

In this instance, I wrote Princess when I was seventeen and I think that really comes across with Baily. I used to be a pushover, abuse will do that to ya, then I became the exact opposite. Someone who wasalways on guard, always expecting the worst from people because it was easier than getting my hopes up that they would be genuine.

So with Princess, I wanted to give dimension to all characters. You get to see someone work through
their trauma and find a balance between those two polarizing aspects. For me, how to make charactersbelievable is to make them human.
 The clichéd “country boy”, “jock”, “girly girl”, “nerdy shy loner, and “goth” wouldn’t be caught dead sitting at the same table in a stereotypical society. But in real life, why wouldn’t they? At a soul level we’re all similar.
I, myself am a black clad, dreaded weirdo, “goth”? Eh. I don’t know if I fit into one category but people often see me as a delinquent. Tattoos, piercings? Dreads?? “Oh, the horror!”

I love all things spooky and mystical, true crime, horror movies…. But under the surface? I refuse to kill spiders or any insects. They have families too. I’ve been told I have a heart of gold and … I try. I always try to see where people are coming from. I seek to understand.

That being said, I wanted to take overused tropes in the form of characters and throw them into a metaphorical blender and see what we get. I wanted to dig deeper, show the souls of these characters instead of just scratching the surface. Because rarely is everything what it seems to be.

And something else that inspired these characters, is the fact that my mom, sister and I are all so different but we speak the same language. My mom is the pastel version of my sister and I. She’s girlyand loves all things flowery and rainbow. But she’s the one who got us into horror movies and true
crime and who taught us to always be our weird selves.

So, dear reader, my unsolicited advice would be to always be yourself even if people stare. Maybe they stare because they wish they had the courage to express themselves in that way.