 Snow White has to have an apple, right? That's the way we've all known the story as we grew up. And yet, as I started writing my version of the tale, I wanted something different. Since my books don't have magic, I couldn't really have a poisoned apple as the way my character gets tricked by the evil queen and has to be rescued. So, I worked out a different twist, still with an apple recipe, but maybe not what you're expecting. And I won't tell more for fear of ruining the surprise.
That being said, there are still a lot of apple elements in my retelling.
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 Snow White had seven dwarves, but I have my story set in the real world. So, I needed seven male figures to be an influence in Kari's life. At the end of Rendersella, we see Kari receive a note from her uncles in Georgia. As soon as my fingers typed those words, I knew there were seven of them. And that she was a Snow White character.
That said, I had no idea what I was getting into by creating seven different characters who all had to be differentiated enough you could tell who was whom. I ended up having AI create the picture above so I could have something to look at and remind myself what each of them looked like instead of trying to remember it all in my head. My editor definitely made me go back and add more details several places, but I love how they turned out. And to make it more fun, they're all named after apples.
 One of the things the movies added to the classic fairytale stories is the adorable little wild animals who end up helping the princesses. And if you're like me, you love that part. But I needed something a bit more realistic than birds and mice helping my Cinderella character. I honestly wasn't sure how I was going to handle her wild animals.
Then, I remembered what we saw when we were in West Virginia.  So, here's something I never knew I would enjoy--writing "bad guys." When I started writing my fairy tale, I knew it had the EVIL stepmother and stepsister. Well, some retellings soften those characters, but most don't. So, I started down the road of having them be evil in my story too.
And y'all, I actually liked having those "scapegoats" to cause mischief and problems for my character. And to blame. In all my other books, my characters don't really have something like that. So, it was nice to have someone to point a finger at and make the bad guy. That being said, I didn't leave it that way.  When you think of fairy tales, do you think of West Virginia. I'll be honest. Until I went there, I probably wouldn't have either.
My family visited some friends a couple years ago over Spring Break. As you can see in the picture, the trees hadn't even leafed out yet because it was so early in the year. But ... there was still this absolute beauty all around us everywhere we went and looked. West Virginia took my breath away. And inspired my Cinderella retelling. How? |
This is a place for me to tell you about what I'm writing, talk about the process or where some of my ideas came from, or even have other authors come in and talk about their books.
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