The Real Reason I Like Fairy Tales

Look at the pretty!!! I got a whole stack of cover flats for THE PAGES OF THE MIND. I tried and tried to get a good pic that captures the truly gorgeous green. It looks olive on my screen, but it’s truly more of a deep emerald/light forest green. I love it so hard. Fortunately Past Jeffe was wise enough to save a pristine copy of each of the cover flats from this series. I’d like to get them all framed individually and create a wall collage of them. I hear the cover for the next book, THE EDGE OF THE BLADE, is another winner (according to my editor), but they’re still tweaking and I haven’t seen it yet.

[Open, open, open…]

So, I’ve started work on THE EDGE OF THE BLADE – none too soon, right? I should be on track to finish by the January 1 deadline, however. Up until now I’ve been working on a new contemporary/erotic novel that Agent Connor pronounced “wonderful” just yesterday and sent out on submission under the title FALLING STAR. (*happy dancing with crossed fingers*)

As I was writing on EDGE, a fairy tale trope blew through my mind and I considered weaving it in. Fairy tale tropes are great for that and, arguably, this entire series is essentially a fairy tale retelling, though the later books go farther and farther afield. (Books 4 and 5 are actually part of a new series called The Uncharted Realms, which reflects that.) But, because this and other stories of mine are rooted in fairy tales, I often get put on those types of panels at conventions, and a perennial question is why do I love fairy tales. I have any number of answers to this question, but the real one just occurred to me.

I was thinking about the story “The Red Shoes” – one I brought up at one of these panels, for the gruesome, punitive ending, which incited a discussion of the various endings. I was familiar with at least three that people mentioned. Then I realized that fairy tales were my first encounter with the idea that the same story could be told multiple ways. As an avid collector of fairy tale books even then, I quickly encountered the same story in different books. Finding there were various ways to tell the same story lit up something inside me.

Still does!

Happy weekend, everyone!