Katy Huth Jones sent us the Backstory for her YA fantasy and we loved it. She tells us that the sequel to Leandra’s Enchanted Flute will be published in February 2013, when she plans on printing a double paperback so that she can donate copies to St. Jude’s and other hospitals treating children with cancer. What does Leandra’s Enchanted Flute have to do with cancer? Katy will tell you…
Katy Huth Jones: I’m a symphony flutist and private teacher, and about ten years ago I took several of my music students to a special performance of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”. I was familiar with the music, of course, but I’d never heard it live before.
The soprano who sang the “Queen of the Night” aria, which is incredibly difficult and screechy-high, was very good. I admired her nerve so much, in fact, that I immersed myself in the opera’s story and music for a while. I had an idea to write a novel version of the story to introduce young people to opera and Mozart in particular, which became sidetracked for a while when I got sick and eventually discovered I had cancer.
After treatment and recovery, I went back to the idea. While jotting down notes about characters and scenes, the character of Songcatcher came to me. During chemotherapy, while I lay sick for weeks on my sofa beside a large window, I’d heard a Carolina wren singing every day, because he lived in the large bush outside the window. Songcatcher was a Carolina wren, and his personality was every bit as sassy as a real one.
I could no longer think of Papageno, the bird character in “The Magic Flute” since I now had a bird character that was much more fascinating to me. And because I imagined the real Carolina wren had sung to me while I was undergoing chemo, I started thinking about a new flute player, a fourteen-year-old girl named Leandra who also has lymphoma and had a Carolina wren sing to her during chemo. Leandra shares many of the same qualities as one of my former flute students who learned to be strong through her illness, which was cystic fibrosis.
Unlike my Carolina wren, Songcatcher does more than sing to Leandra; his magical song transports her to his magical world. And once Songcatcher opened my eyes to the beauties of Finian Jahndra, I totally forgot about Mozart and the Magic Flute and Papageno and entered this new world instead.
Published by Cool Well Press, Inc.
Leandra’s Enchanted Flute: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
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