Spinner of Secrets Update One

This is the working cover for Spinner of Secrets. 

For those of you who don’t know, Spinner of Secrets is the Rumpelstiltskin short story I wrote for a writing prompt last May that quickly snowballed into a novella. I’m now on the seventh draft of editing, which is the furthest I have ever gotten with a story that’s more than 3,000 words long. Here’s my Facebook update from a few days ago:

I have been struggling with the name for my main character ever since I spoke with a friend in October and she said that I probably shouldn’t use the name Lacey, because there’s a Rumpelstiltskin retelling with that name already. Oh, great! What else am I supposed to do? That’s her name!

Well, I went with Aleya because I couldn’t come up with anything better at the time, but I wasn’t happy with it at all. I was complaining about it to another friend and she suggested looking it up in a foreign language. Well I tried that and all I was able to find (and my search skills might be lacking, but whatever) was that Lacey is Lacey, is Lacey. It’s just Lacey any which way.

So I was complaining about that to a third friend (this is what my friends have to deal with, be warned) and she suggested looking up the adjective lace or lacy. I found that lace in Italian is merlettato, and I thought about Merlette or something like that, but Letta jumped out and caught my eye. I went and looked up Letta, and found that the name means ‘truth’ or ‘truthful one’. 

Man, did I like that! It’s perfect! The name itself is a simple, common sounding name, which is what I wanted because this girl is not elegant, is not refined, is not any fancy or particularly special. And she gets tangled up in a lie that threatens her life and happiness, and it’s worse for her because she is a truthful girl by nature, and… Yeah. It was just grand. 

So, as of 9:21 am on June 7th, I am at 17,274 words.