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Friday, June 22, 2018

My Favorite Fairy Tale, a Blog Hop Party


Greetings, fairy tale explorers! Welcome to my portion of the fairy tale blog hop. I hope you have a good time exploring different authors this week, and I hope you find something new to delight you (better yet if it’s me!).

Thirteen fairy tale authors have gotten together to talk about their favorite fairy tales. Follow the links at the bottom of each blog post to hop to the next author’s website. Collect our favorite numbers to total up at the end and enter to win a print collection of our books! (There are several anthologies, debuts, and even an ARC for a BLINK YA book you can’t buy in stores yet!)

Favorite fairy tale? That used to be an easy question. “Beauty and the Beast,” of course. In college, as part of graduating with university honors, you had to write a thesis paper. I wrote mine on—you guessed it—“Beauty and the Beast.” Oh, I ate, drank, slept, and read that story for several months. So many different versions, with lots of contemporary ones. And the picture books! So many picture books. (Despite all this, I sadly left some ridiculous gaps, so please don’t ask me about Villeneuve’s version. I’m still embarrassed that I didn’t read that.)

Which was my favorite retelling? Definitely not the Disney film. I like elements of the Disney, but I can’t escape feeling like Belle is stuck up and just really not the Beauty that I wanted her to be.* My favorite version was easily Robin McKinley’s Beauty. And then, when I wrote my own (currently shelved) novel-length version, that was my favorite.  

I love “Beauty and the Beast” for its story of redemption, which was in fact what I wrote about. Here’s the TL;DR: The story is about more than falling in love with a beast. It’s about the power of seeing people truly and how that changes them—and us. There you go, about 64 pages summed up in a sentence (64, by the way, is 2^6; I love powers of 2, which is why 16 is my favorite small-ish number).**

But to make another long story short, years have since intervened, and the luster has faded from dear Beauty, the Beast, and all their incarnations. Asked today, I would be much harder pressed to answer, but I’m leaning toward “The Six Swans” (so much angst! so much sacrifice!) or “Diamonds and Toads” (my favorite theme—how gifts can be curses, and vice versa!). I even have a flash version of “Diamonds and Toads” here on the blog, if you want to check it out.

Which probably explains how I’ve ended up starting a novel based on a character from each of these tales. I love these characters so much, and if I can do even a little justice to who they are, you will too (someday).

So that’s it! Thanks for coming by. Now go visit Alicia Gale and find out what she has to say. If you’ve already been to all 13 stops and collected everyone’s favorite number, then go enter to win the grand prize.

As an added bonus, if you’d like to be included in an additional drawing (for an individual copy of Unspun), go to my Facebook page, follow me, and leave a comment letting me know what your favorite fairy tale is and why.

For an additional entry to my individual drawing (only available after Sunday, the 24th), go to Timeless Tales magazine and read some of the Snow White issue, which features my super-fluffy (and somewhat out of character for me) “The Nanny Job,” then come back to Facebook and tell me what you think of Snow White stories (doesn’t have to be mine).

And finally, if you just can’t wait and want to make sure you get a copy of Unspun, it’s on sale just this weekend. Go forth and purchase and enjoy!

Happy reading, all!


* On the other hand, in junior high I used to walk home from school while reading a book, and a boy I had a crush on called me “Belle” one time (just after we almost collided), and that felt like a compliment, so... mixed feelings?
** Which may also have something to do with why I’m a geek. (And yes, 16 is the number you’re looking for in the blog hop.)

6 comments:

  1. Despite Beauty and the Beast not being my favorite fairy tale, I actually have read the Villeneuve version. Have you seen the 1946 French film version of beauty and the beast? That is probably my favorite version. (I admit, I have outlined a retelling of beauty and the beast which I don't know if I will actually ever write.)

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    1. You probably would have written my thesis better than I did. ;) And if I remember correctly, I did see that version. But it has been a very long time. Cocteau, if it's the one I'm thinking of, with weird surreal stuff like hands for hall lamps and such. Good times.
      I bet your retelling would be pretty great.

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  2. Sleeping Beauty is my favorite because it has fairies magic and dragons also I followed

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    1. Oh yes, fairies, magic, and dragons are an excellent combination! I always loved the Disney fairies, honestly--Meriweather was my favorite. Because BLUE of course! :)

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  3. I love Joan Aiken's 20thj century fairy tales, like The Serial Garden. But I also love The Singing, Springing Lark and The Seven Ravens (Grimm, a sort of version of the Twelve Swans) and Oscar Wilde's The Fisherman and his Soul and … ooh, I could go on and on. I've followed you on Facebook!

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    1. Wow, those all sound great! I shall have to look them up! Thanks for the suggestions!

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