E. G. Bella

Happy Friday!

Cabin Girl has now been out in the wild for five whole days! We’re slowly approaching the end of the launch tour, and I have been enjoying it so much! Everyone has been very encouraging.

To recap, Cabin Girl is now available on Amazon as a both a paperback and an ebook. And right here on my website (with a slightly longer wait time but it comes signed, with two custom bookmarks)!

And we’re on day five of the launch tour, with only two more to go! There are some great reviews coming up, and you can find the entire schedule, book details, and giveaway information (with links) below. We’ll get on with the rest of the post after that.

Let’s jump in!

Book Information

Sickness. Sharks. Sabotage. Secrecy.

In the rolling hills of 1600’s Ireland, young Éirinn O’Connell learns all she can of medicine, struggling to care for her starving family—until the night Barbary pirates raid her village, and she’s dragged from the only home she’s ever known.

Set on a course to the slave markets of Morocco, and amidst a crew as turbulent as the ocean around her, Éirinn searches for a way home. But who can she trust? And how will she survive the Captain’s constant torment? Éirinn soon discovers the danger in trusting appearances and learns that it’s never too late for a second chance.

Even for the unlikeliest of people.

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Launch Tour Schedule

Monday, September 18th

• Cabin Girl Release and Giveaway! (Launch Tour: Day 1)
• Book Review by S. K. Jacklyn
• Author Interview by Abbigail Raine B.
• Podcast Interview by The Wordsmith’s Edge

Tuesday, September 19th

• Why You Should Read Cabin Girl (Launch Tour: Day 2)
• Author Interview by Raina Nightingale
• Author Interview by Kate Willis

Wednesday, September 20th

• Bible Verses That Remind Me of Cabin Girl (Launch Tour: Day 3)

Thursday, September 21st

• What Readers Are Saying About Cabin Girl (Launch Tour: Day 4)
• Character Interview (Captain Gills) by Issabelle Perry

Friday, September 22nd

• Fun and Random Facts About Cabin Girl (Launch Tour: Day 5) (you are here!)
• Spotlight Post by Saraina Whitney

Saturday, September 23rd

• What I’ve Learned While Writing Cabin Girl (Launch Tour: Day 6)
• Book Review by Elizabeth Mae Wolfram

Sunday, September 24th

• The End…and the Beginning of Cabin Girl’s Release (Launch Tour: Day 7)
• Book Review by Virginia Henderson

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Giveaway Information

From September 18th through September 24th, there’s a Cabin Girl themed giveaway! The winners will be contacted and announced September 25th! We’re approaching the end!

Yes, there are prizes for one U.S. winner and one international winner!

Here are the prizes to be won:

U. S. Only:

• One signed paperback copy of Cabin Girl
• Two custom themed candles by Flickerwix
• Two custom bookmarks
• One 18″ golden compass necklace by Starlight by Silvie (Etsy)
• Lemon/ginger herbal tea

International:

• One ebook copy of Cabin Girl
• Themed phone and desktop wallpapers
• Exclusive first chapter of Gills (upcoming Cabin Girl prequel novel)

Take a flip through some of the prize pictures below! (Candles and wallpapers not pictured)

To enter the giveaway, all you have to do is go to click THIS LINK.

Good luck and happy entering!

Fun and Random Facts About Cabin Girl

Today’s post is a little bit of a different one.

I’ve debated about whether to write it since I first thought about doing a launch tour, and haven’t been able to decide whether potential readers would find it interesting and fun, or weird and boring.

Obviously, since we’re here, I’ve decided to try it, haha.

Sometimes, as you’re writing a book, you develop a list of interesting facts that you’ve found about your story. Maybe things you’ve noticed, things you’ve put into the book on purpose, or things that changed from its original plan. I definitely have a few of those facts from Cabin Girl, and today, I thought I’d take the time to share them with you.

And as much as I hope they intrigue you now, I think many of these fun facts will be even more interesting, and offer even more value, to come back to after reading Cabin Girl.

So if you’re so inclined, maybe bookmark this page and come back to it again later to see if there are more things you pick up on, or if some of the facts make more sense after reading the story!

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Here are some random facts about Cabin Girl:

~I began developing Cabin Girl on September 4th, 2018, and officially started writing it in January of 2019.

~ One of the main first title ideas included The Better Dream.

~ Éirinn’s name was originally just spelled Erin.

~ The only reason I decided on Éirinn’s name in the first place was because I needed something that could sound like a boy’s name upon hearing it (Aaron). This became a lot less important as time went on, but at that point, it just suited her.

~ I never nailed down an exact date range that Cabin Girl takes place in, but it’s somewhere around the mid to late 1600’s.

~ In the first draft, Éirinn’s main struggle after being kidnapped was not how to get back to her family, but whether she should join the pirates so she could achieve her dream of being a healer and see the world, or go back to her family where she felt trapped.

~ The story was originally set in Spain, not Ireland. However, Éirinn was still Irish, and one of her secondary goals was to go back to Ireland, where they lived with her father when she was young.

~ Éirinn’s furry friend, Murphy, was almost not included in Cabin Girl at all. I’m so glad he was!

~ The pirate Acker used to be named Hardy, but his name turned out to be too close to another pirate’s (Han), and it was too confusing for readers to keep them straight in the large cast of pirates.

~ All of my immediate family members (parents and siblings) have name cameos in the book. Whether it’s a middle name, nickname, scrambled-up version of their name…I got them all!

~ The very first draft of Cabin Girl clocked in at almost exactly 49,000 words – just 1,000 words short of the industry-standard requirement to be considered a novel. It wasn’t a huge deal, but it bugged me to no end. I’m glad to say it’s around 83,000 now.

~ The compass Éirinn carries from her father used to be necklace from her mother in original drafts.

~ In the very first draft, there was a “walking the plank” scene that I honestly loved. For realism, it got cut.

~ Captain Gills is inspired by Long John Silver from Disney’s Treasure Planet.

~ Murphy’s name was chosen for several reasons. First, as a nod to the pink companion from Treasure Planet named Morph (Éirinn often calls him Murph). Second, because it means “hound of the sea”.

~ Éirinn’s younger sister Ciara’s name comes from a Gaelic word and means “dark-haired”. Éirinn named her when she was born as her mother wouldn’t. Naturally, Ciara has black hair, like her mother.

~ Éirinn’s mother’s condition is meant to have began as severe postpartum depression, verging into something like postpartum psychosis. In that time, no one around her understood or knew how to help.

~ Captain Gills never once refers to Éirinn by her given name. Only by nicknames and insults.

~ Another character never refers to Captain Gills as Captain, only by his name.

~ Captain Gills uses close to fifty different alliterations and insults throughout the book, only reusing his favorites.

~ Scully’s last name was chosen intentionally for its meaning.

~ To learn not to rely on adverbs, I wrote the entire first draft without using a single one. Only after I learned how to use them more effectively did some get added back into the book.

~ In personality types, Éirinn is an ISFJ, enneagram type 2w1, and a melancholic. Captain Gills is an ENTJ, enneagram type 8w7, and a choleric. Pretty much opposites!

~ In The Secretive Seas Series, the number of words in the title will indicate the chronological order of the books. For example, Cabin Girl is the second and middle book in the trilogy.

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Well, there we go. I hope you found this short list of facts interesting, and that it’s not just me who thinks so, haha! Again, feel free to come back to this page after reading Cabin Girl and you might find that some of these facts make even more sense!

Stay tuned for the last two days of the launch tour!

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