Beauty and the Beast has always been my favorite fairy tale. I love all things Grimm, I adore Hans Christian Anderson, but that one simple tale from a woman who (as far as I know) never wrote another has always been my absolute favorite. Before I could read, I had the Disney version and that is really where the love began. I hated Disney princesses when I was little. Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty sat around waiting for princes to rescue them when they should've tried to save themselves and Ariel...well...come on. She gave up being a Mermaid for a dork she met once while he was unconscious. How could I respect such a person? But Belle was different. She found herself a prisoner in the castle of a "horrible monstrous beast!" far from home, surrounded by strange enchanted objects yet she refused to let the beast intimidate her. When he roared, she screamed right back at him. She didn't back down. And in the end she rescued him. In 1991, to four year old feminist me, Belle was the ultimate princess. I must confess that even now I do like Disney's Belle better than the original fairy tale version. And throughout the years there have been many versions of the story told and retold. For years I sat on the idea knowing I would one day write my vampire version but feeling a bit intimidated at the thought. What should I keep from the old stories? What should I remove? What should I completely twist around altogether?
I tried to start the novel a couple of times without success. Then one night as I lay awake in bed, the first few pages came to me. I saw it all: Her father's death, the storm, the castle, the man who wasn't quite a man...and at last I had it. My La Belle et la Bete. Not only did I have it but I knew that even though it was Rapunzel that started it all, her book was not the first in the series I was creating. No, it was Beauty and the Beast that was destined all along to kick things off. And now I have self-published my vampire version of the tale as old as time through amazon.com. Thirteen years ago when this whole vampire fairy tale thing started for me, I thought it was a safe bet that no one else would hit on those ideas. Anne Rice was winding down her vampire career (which, thankfully, she is reviving this year) and there were no other vampire authors that you heard about. No one was making darker versions of tales that began with 'Once Upon a Time'....But now that has all changed. Each year that passes with more vampires and more fairy tales retold, I hold my breath fearing someone will do what I've done and publish it before me. I am tired of holding my breath. For this reason alone, I'm going the self-publishing route.
The next book in this series will be Rapunzel's followed by the tale of Sleeping Beauty, known in my books as Kila. Should you decide to check Beauty and the Beast out, you will become acquainted with Kila Macgregor, the Highland Vampire Witch that was once put to sleep for decades under a curse that belonged to her own family. Unfortunately, Rapunzel isn't as social with her kind so beyond one brief glimpse of her in a bar, you'll have nothing to go on until I clean the book up and put it out there. You will also hear the brief tale of Snow White. I didn't want to write an entire book about her but I felt like she had to be included. Come on. "Skin as white as snow"? How could I not somehow include her? Eventually I hope to include Cinderella and possibly Peter Pan as well. I actually started that one shortly after I started Rapunzel and it had a nice beginning but the pages were either lost or thrown away. At any rate, I do intend to retell more fairy tales. But the three that start the series are connected beyond the fairy tale thing, as you will see, and before I move on to the unrelated tales, I have to resolve the major conflict that binds them.
All of my vampires in every vampire novel I write are connected through undead familial ties. I can't call it DNA nor can I say they are connected by blood since their blood changes often and unless they kill families together, it isn't the same. :) But they all, from the youngest to the oldest, can be traced back either through Makers or directly to the first vampire of this kind, Lucius. In this way, all of my vampire books, those I've written and those I will write in the future, are connected. When I rewrite the two novels I started writing when I was twelve, the characters will overlap with those found in Beauty and the Beast but they are not so connected that you cannot read one without reading the other. I always say writing is like weaving. You weave the pieces together to make a part and then you weave the parts together to create the entire tapestry. As it stands in my mind now, the plans I have for future novels and the guesses I can make about what I might do beyond that, all of my novels will somehow connect with one another with the exception of those I write about hot blooded bodies with beating hearts...umm..humans. So if you should happen to get Beauty and the Beast and you like it, if you should happen to like the others that will follow, please know that even though they may be part of a series that other books are not part of, they are all associated with one another, even if it's loosely.
Here is the link to the book. It has a temporary cheesy cover that amazon gave it for the moment while my dear friend Tim works on the real deal. I know. That's like sending your kid naked for her first day of school. But I wanted to simply rip the band-aid off, so to speak. So don't judge the book by its cover until the cover is more presentable.
No comments:
Post a Comment