The Mystical Rule of Sevens

Last month, a writer buddy, Charlotte Henley Babb, ran a series of fascinating posts about magical, mystical, and historical hepta-items (I just made that up). I encourage you to go read up on the weirdness of sevens. It's one of "those" numbers fraught with meaning or, at least, comes up a whole lot in numerology.

Try these on for size (all links go to Charlotte's blog):

The 7 Wonders of the World (ancient, modern, engineering, medieval)
The 7 Voyages of Sinbad
The 7 Voyages of Zheng He (betcha didn't know this one)
7 Things You Probably Don't Know About Joan of Arc
7 Obscure Facts About the Statue of Liberty
7 Sages of the World

There are more. Go check them out. You won't be sorry.

I commented on Charlotte's post on Sinbad since I had a book of seven tales about a girl and her genie. They started as short stories, and I eventually put them together with a framing story (like 1001 Nights is a framing story for Scheherazade's tales).

A couple of the stories ("Cadida and the Djinn" and "Cadida and the Cave Demon" were published on their own. Once I'd written a few, I realized I was head toward that magical number 7.

Thus, "The Seven Adventures of Cadida" was published by Sam's Dot Published as individual tales in a single volume. We all liked the cover for "Cadida and the Cave Demon," so that became the cover for Seven Adventures.

SDP is long gone, so I revamped, edited, and built the framing tales about the old storyteller in the bazaar who relates the adventures to a young girl. This became "The Tales of Abu Nuwas." I let that float about for awhile, until I did a bit more writing and revamping for MuseItUp Publishing, where it was published in ebook format as "Setara's Genie."

As you can see, Setara (originally Cadida) has been around the block a few times. Here she is again in yet one more incarnation in print. Let's see, does it all add up to seven? Not quite, but I haven't looked into audio books yet.

Comment on my posts this month to have a chance to win the proof copy of the paperback, slightly offset cover and all. It's a rare item despite all of Setara's appearance in the world of publishing. Here's what I hope will be the final cover for the book. The ebook cover became the front cover for the paperback. A big huzzah for Charlotte Volnek, the cover artist who created the original. I just added the back cover and background.

NOTE: If you haven't read Charlotte's hilarious book, "Maven Fairy Godmother," you're missing out. It's available in ebook and print formats.