Monday, April 16, 2012

Jennifer Crusie's Blog: Fairy Tale Mistakes, Fixed


Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie

A bit of news I picked up from the SBTB fairy tale romance novel discussion today is that Jennifer Crusie and a few other authors are writing a collection of fairy tale retellings, short stories that is. I read Crusie's Bet Me several years ago on the recommendation of a SurLaLune reader and had fun with its fairy tale references, such as the shoes. Here's more about the book in progress which definitely put this on my "look for this" list:

From Jennifer Crusie's blog, Fairy Tale Mistakes, Fixed (Feb 12 2012):

One of the things that Lani and Krissie and I have been talking about is our long-delayed collaboration on Fairy Tale Lies. It’s been long delayed because we all have other books we have to finish first, but we love the idea and we love our characters and plots . . .

Actually that wasn’t true. We all loved their characters and plots. Lani’s writing a really pissed-off Rapunzel who just got scammed by a wolf in conman’s clothing who looks a lot like Robert Downey, Jr., and Krissie’s writing a really pissed-off Cinderella who just got dissed by a Grand Vizier who sounds a lot like Alan Rickman. (When you’re collaborating, you have to give your collaborators concrete references until you’re far enough into the book that all the characters become who they’re going to be and are clear to everybody.) I was writing Red Riding Hood as a grandmother who goes into the woods to keep her teenage granddaughter from making the Family Mistake and ending up knocked up by a wolf. Lani and Krissie were fine with it, and I loved all the metaphor-and-symbolism richness of Red going back into the woods as an adult, but I couldn’t make it catch fire for me. I collaged it, I wrote the intro scene for it, but I could not make it work. Which was okay, I have Liz and Zelda’s books to work on. But it bugged me just the same.

There's much more to read on the blog itself, this was just to whet your interest and send you over there....

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