AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Summer Satchwell

08 Sunday Nov 2026

Posted by in The Fairy Whisperers

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

Welcome to Conversations with Fairy Whisperers, Summer! I understand you’re new to the world of publishing your stories, and that you chose a fairy tale to draw inspiration from for your recently published first book. Tell us about yourself, when did you first start writing stories, and how did you become an author?

Hello, and thank you for having me! I have been writing stories for as long as I’ve been able to read, and I’ve always had a deep love for Fantasy. I used to write journal entries for a vampiric alter ego I had in junior high named “Selene Vampira.” Haha!

I had several manuscripts that are unfortunately now lost to the ether from my writing growing up, and so now, as an adult, especially residing in the “BookTok” community, I read about self-publishing, and decided to look into it. Once I did that, I dug through the mental trenches in my mind, where I like to escape when the world gets dreary, and found this story in my drafts. With much fine-tuning and editing, it finally became Beauty and the Deceased!

Do you have a favourite fairy tale? And what fascinates you about it?

I love almost any fairytale I come across. I can’t pick just one favorite, but my top two would be Beauty and the Beast, and Bluebeard.

Beauty and the Beast is a favorite for me especially in terms of romance. The idea of someone who has a gruff, cranky, badly-behaved exterior gradually softening for the right person with love, kindness, and affection, just gives me hope for the world, and has carried me very much into my reading demographic as an adult.

On the flip side, the tale of Bluebeard fascinates me because of the gore aspect of it. I don’t know why, but something about particularly gory stories itches a part of my brain and makes me want more. I want to understand every facet of the story, especially the bloody parts. Hence the Sloth, Gluttony, Pride and Greed trials.

Of all the styles and formats retellings come in—pictorial, screen, graphic, illustrated, or written—which do you most favour?

I deeply enjoy graphic novels here and there, especially as I’ve gotten older, but sometimes I almost find it easier to read them. That being said, written will always have the number one place in my heart. A few of my favorites include the Fairy Tale Heat series by Lidiya Foxglove, the A Court Of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas, the Twisted Tales saga, released by Disney, the Once Upon a Time is Timeless series, and the Villains saga by Serena Valentino. They take classics we know and love and put a fresh spin on it, bringing a new life to it.

In your opinion, what makes a retelling stand out? What do you consider the joys and challenges of writing in this specific subgenre?

I think the most important part is keeping the heart of the story central to the retelling. It can be different for each fairytale. For Beauty and the Beast retellings in particular, I find the heart for me is always the love story, and showing how not only the “Beast” character changes, but also the Heroine, facing whatever fear or conquering her challenge to find herself as well.

The joys for me are finding new ways to reinvent stories that have been told hundreds of times, and what I can do to make it different, but on the other side of the coin, that can also be a challenge, because how do you make a story new and different while keeping the core beats? Hint: in my case, much murder and blood is involved . . .

In your opinion, what fairy tale is the most complicated to reinvent, and why?

I feel like The Little Mermaid can be quite difficult, because there are only so many ways you can adapt it. But I actually read a fantastic retelling that I absolutely loved, Of Song and Scepter by Liesl West. It takes what you know, or in my case have memorized, and flips it on its head.

Your first book, Beauty and the Deceased, is a romance inspired by “Beauty and the Beast,” our favourite tale on this site. How did you come across the idea for this story, and what can you tell us about its creative process?

So, it is actually inspired by a plethora of things, primarily Beauty and the Beast of course, but I have also always been fascinated with the story behind the Disney attraction The Haunted Mansion, with a particular emphasis on Constance Hatchaway’s story. I have always wondered how so many spirits came to haunt that one house, and so the web of storytelling began from there.

I used to work in a call center that forbade cellphone and electronics usage, so all I had was my notebook, a pen, and some coloring pages to keep me busy when it was slow. I gradually began to work on the story there. Fun fact: It was originally supposed to focus on Nathaniel and Priscilla’s story, and how they came to Kingsley Manor, but as time went on, and I continued writing, I decided I really wanted to focus on the Kingsley siblings.

I also frequently have dreams, and they often inspire me to include specific elements in my stories: for Beauty and the Deceased, much of the reworked plotline came from one of my dreams! Thank you, melatonin!

Many authors who started their careers writing retellings later abandon fairy tale retellings for other genres and story ideas. What are your own future writing projects?

I’m currently writing the three sequels to Beauty and the Deceased, each based on one of the Kingsley siblings. My primary focus right now is finishing the first draft of The Books and the Damned, which is Liana’s book, and it is a spin-off/sequel to “The Phantom of the Opera,” with many influences taken from Phantom Manor, Disneyland Paris’ Haunted Mansion equivalent.

And then I have The Bride and the Dead, which is Carine’s story, and will be a prequel to the BATD universe, and features a reverse Bluebeard theme; and The Blaze and the Dark, which will be Edward’s story, and is going to be a Hunchback retelling set in the Wild West. I am also working on a semi-autobiographical comedic story of my life type of book, detailing my innermost thoughts and opinions, because I have many opinions on life  . . . And most of them shouldn’t be made public, haha.

Sounds like you won’t be dropping the Beauty & Beast theme anytime soon! I like your choices for future retellings a lot. I know your preferred genre for writing your retellings in is Romance rather than Folkloric Fantasy, and was curious about whether you had ever thought of writing your original fairy tale instead of a story inspired by one?

Absolutely! I would love to, and it is on my bucket list. My mom always says that she wants me to write something “real,” in her words. I think what she means is something that is set in our real world, not a Fantasy one where ghosts have to participate in deadly trials. I just have yet to come up with the story yet.

It’s also a bit frightening, because Fantasy/Romantasy/Romance/Retellings feel like my safe place. Like I know there is a demographic for them, because I am in that demographic, and I don’t know how a real-world story would be received. But I do want to push myself so I can grow as an author.

If there was a Hall of Fame for retold fairy tales, which would you consider the best retold stories and why are they worthy of inclusion in said Hall of Fame?

Oh, yes! Get ready for a list of all lists . . . One of my hyperfixations is making lists, I’ll limit myself to ten.

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas: this book made me fall in love with reading again, so I feel like it’s a given.

Cinder and Ella by Melissa Lemon: a local author close to home, this is a sleeper hit of a retelling that holds a very special place in my heart.

Of Rime and Ruin by Liesl West: a “Beauty and the Beast” retelling where the main characters are sea creatures/mermaids, and truly gives meaning to the word “Transformation.”

The Plated Prisoner Series by Raven Kennedy: a retelling of the King Midas fable that proves even if you are made of gold, you can do anything you set your mind to . . .including overthrowing corrupt governments.

As Old as Time: A Twisted Tale by Liz Braswell: one of the first retellings I ever read of Beauty and the Beast that made me think “What if…?”

The Goblin Cinderella by Lidiya Foxglove: I don’t have words for this book, it’s the book I pick up when I am in a reading slump because it pulls me back together.

Throne of Secrets by Kerri Maniscalco: another fantastic Cinderella retelling, where Prince Charming is the Demon Prince of Gluttony and Cinderella is a cynical journalist trying to expose his secrets.

Crossed by Emily McIntire: a Hunchback retelling where Esmeralda falls in love with Frollo, because sometimes the villain deserves the princess. . . If the villain is hot and age-appropriate.

Raising the Horseman by Serena Valentino: another sleeper hit, it’s a retelling the Legend of the Headless Horseman. I read this every time the spooky season rolls around.

Beauty and the Deceased by me. I mean, I’m biased, haha.

Is there an author who you view as a role model for your own writing?

Summer Satchwell

Yes, I have a few authors I deeply look up to, especially in terms of writing style. Raven Kennedy is a huge inspiration to me, as well as Sarah J. Maas and Kerri Maniscalco. The way they write just strikes a chord in me, and I love the style. (And a tall, dark and broody male main character never hurt anyone either . . . Well, you know what I mean!

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us, Summer! We will be keeping an eye on your future books, which we hope shall be many more in the years to come.

Two Stories of Transformation: “Mestra” & “Galatea” by Madeline Miller

08 Sunday Nov 2026

Posted by in Re-examining Beauty and the Beast

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

MESTRA

“So my father sold me to the man for seven roasted chickens.”

Imagine that, being sold for food and not because your father is truly starving.

This short story is about Mestra, daughter of the king of Thessaly, who has been cursed by a goddess with insatiable hunger as punishment for a grave offence. Her father has eaten everything and is still hungering for more and more, and because he only has his child left, Mestra is sold for seven chickens to someone promising to rid him of the affliction. But as she is taken to her new husband’s home, she invokes the god Poseidon, who had forced himself on her recently, and gets an unexpected gift.

With the ability to metamorphose into anything, man or woman or animal, Mestra escapes her forced marriage. But back home, her dad decides to sell her off as a bride again for a price over and over, as he’s afflicted by uncontrollable greed besides hunger.

It’s not too long before the father realises this scheme isn’t working well, that his hope about the gift of the god overwriting the goddess’ curse is dangerous for his daughter too, as other shapeshifters have paid dearly for the ability, so he comes up with an idea to rid Mestra of it. His “solution” is so terrible that Mestra shapeshifts upon realising she’ll die and be eaten otherwise, and flees to live away with a cousin, with whom she can be free and relatively content, still keeping her metamorphosis powers.

That’s it, that’s all there is to Mestra. It’s short and straightforward, with no pretensions.

Read more: Two Stories of Transformation: “Mestra” & “Galatea” by Madeline Miller

Well, it does have one pretension: it presumes that the reader already knows the Greek myth of King Erysichthon, the vain and greedy ruler of Thessaly, who in a moment of hubris built a gorgeous hall to the greater glory of himself, and because he needed materials, he went and felled the sacred oak from a grove consecrated to the goddess Demeter, who cursed him to perennial, all-consuming, and torturous hunger. If the reader doesn’t know the myth, or doesn’t Google it after finishing the short story, many things won’t make sense for lack of context. For example, in Miller’s short story, the king isn’t named at all; the author doesn’t even clarify who cursed him and for what, she assumes the readership has to know the background of the king’s “affliction” (as she calls it in-book).

The part that corresponds to Mestra’s own story, which she is the sole POV for, doesn’t necessarily require foreknowledge of the myth, and in a way it might even be better if you don’t know it and learn the true plot afterwards. Because if you happen to already know the myth, as I do, then Mestra will read as too straightforward a retelling, and rather unsatisfying for how underdeveloped and unimaginative it is.

Because, really, I don’t believe this can be called a fresh or original take. What changes there are in relation to the myth are minimal, but three in particular are rather curious: the entire Poseidon/Mestra relationship is described as a one-time rape when she was a teen, not as an abduction and a long affair that produced children (in some versions); Erysichthon marries her off for food instead of selling her into slavery the first time; and, more curious of all, Erysichthon tries to eat Mestra, which is what prompts her to flee.

I’m not sure I understand Miller’s rationale for the last change. The point of Demeter’s curse is that Erysichthon ends up eating himself to death, and only then his daughter leaves because she’s finally freed of her misplaced filial loyalty. He never tries to eat her or break her “curse” (that is so profitable to him), and she doesn’t break free from her shackles whilst he’s alive. Her tragedy is that she is too devoted to an undeserving parent, so excessively loyal she sacrifices herself in such a way that changing shapes becomes her liberation.

She is a victim of her father’s hubris, but here she works also as a nemesis. I’m not sure I can see a real need for this.

The other changes are to be expected from Miller. She has a track record of making things worse for women than they were (and goodness knows the past was ugly for us women as is) in order to make them greater victims than they really were, thus when their moment of freedom, their moment of empowerment, or their happy ending, finally arrive it’s all the more triumphal. Her making the men worse villains is also expected for the same reasons (Poseidon is a bigger bastard here, as is Erysichthon), but I raised an eyebrow at Miller not making any distinction between slavery and marriage; and I resent that she absolves Mestra of her one fatal flaw: self-destructive loyalty.

Mestra’s isn’t a story about feminine freedom, it’s about a woman so emotionally co-dependent on an exploitative and selfish father that she becomes a victim of and remains a victim of his foibles until his passing frees her, even though she has the tools to free herself much before. It’s like the woman in a toxic relationship that keeps coming back and financially supporting the abuser, the alcoholic, the drug addict, etc., at her own expense and against all good judgment. In the myth, Mestra never realises this, she’s too loyal and too caring, and misuses Poseidon’s gift to return again and again for more exploitation by her father, never breaking the cycle. Her gift is double-edged: it frees her from the unwanted suitors, but it enslaves her to her father’s whims. In Mestra, though, her gift is made to be her ultimate empowerment.

As this is the third short story retelling of hers that I read, I think Madeline Miller is a better writer in long form than in short form. When she does short form, her stories tend to follow the major plot beats but in a way that never lets the reader know what’s going on without previous familiarity with the myth she is rehashing. There’s no sense of them being actual myth retellings when it’s short stories, they could be regular short stories placed anywhere, and you get the sense that they’re myth retellings mostly from the Greek names and the gods mentioned (plus the titles, all pointing to what myth is used).

In her novels, however, she manages a sense of time and place that makes you go, “Ah, this is a Greek myth retold!” She can pad up context to her changes in novel form, too, so mythology-educated readers aren’t going to be left scratching their heads because at least the changes will make sense within the storyline.

I think the story of Mestra should’ve been a full novel. I heard Miller is working on an Eros & Psyche book, a myth with Beauty and the Beast themes, but if she wanted a really unique retelling carrying this motif, the story of Mestra is pure gold. Think about that: a genderbent B&B-style story in which beastliness isn’t a curse nor a punishment but salvation. I have read some proper B&B retellings that have tried the “beastliness is a gift, not a curse” plot twist and most failed miserably in the execution because of the motive for the transformation not being adequate for the plot twist. In the case of Mestra, the motive for the transformation works perfectly as lifesaving and empowering (she’d have remained a slave if not for Poseidon enabling her to morph into animals to escape), and that it’s compounded by her one fatal flaw (boy, did the Greeks love their fatal flaw plot twists!) makes it all the more complex.

But who would be Mestra’s “Beauty”? Depends on which source you side with. Miller is using Ovid’s version from Metamorphoses, and the Roman poet recounts a Beast & Beast pairing for her, as her eventual husband Autolycus is also a shapeshifter. You see, this makes the potential even more interesting, because Autolycus’s gift of metamorphosis is used for ill purposes (he’s a thief), unlike hers.

As it stands, though, Mestra is a missed opportunity: a brilliant premise squeezed into a handful of pages, and the one flaw that made the myth tragic, and interesting, traded for an easy triumph. A novel would have given Miller the room to build Mestra’s loyalty, let it hurt her, and make the gift cost her something before it set her free. Whoever her Beauty turned out to be, I would have read that book in a heartbeat. This one I will mostly remember for sending me back to revisit the myth.

GALATEA

“I’m always this color,” I said. “Because I used to be made of stone.”

In this retelling of the Greek myth of Galatea and Pygmalion, Galatea is the sheltered wife of a sculptor who keeps her homebound and bedbound like she’s sick whilst she longs to go out and walk. A gift from the goddess Aphrodite, in answer to the sculptor’s prayers, turned her from stone to flesh, a state she still remembers, but her husband denies it and tells her caretakers that she’s prone to flights of fantasy whenever she says she used to be stone.

This story is basically about what life is like for Galatea after she turns into a living woman, and to be honest, Madeline Miller has changed the myth in ways that don’t make much sense. Pygmalion and Galatea is one of the rare Greek myths with a happy, functional couple, and by all accounts they were a loving couple, they had a son, and lived normally. Nothing in the mythology hints at anything problematic, which is something in a mythical corpus like the Greek, so full of rape, kidnapping, murder, fratricide, and all sorts of horrible stuff.

Which is why I’m surprised that Miller would take this myth and twist it to make Galatea’s story a complete tragedy and Pygmalion the villain.

Not only does Pygmalion keep her confined at home, but he also doesn’t treat her well. Thanks to his gift for sculpting, he’s rich now (in the myth, he was a king, so he didn’t get his fortune from sculpting), and he keeps a secret sculpture of a perfect girl because now that Galatea is flesh, she’s no longer perfect: her husband even makes a cruel remark to her about having stretch marks (she had a child, which Miller changes from a son to a daughter). He makes her feel like she’s no longer desirable, that she’s too fragile to go out and raise her daughter or play with her.

And he makes her abort. Because pregnancy would ruin her perfect body.

When Galatea disobeys and goes exploring in the house, she discovers the perfect sculpture of a perfect girl and thinks it is her substitute, because it’s a young girl and he hints at wanting perfect youth and virginity again. She runs away one day, but is brought back and scolded. Then, due to the treatment she is given as if she were an aging doll, she escapes a second time with the intention to drown herself. Pygmalion (who is never named here) runs after her to bring her back, but she drags him into the sea with her and he drowns as she sinks into the deep water.

I’m at a loss for words at this take. My first thought is: why? What is Miller trying to say here? To critique male obsession with beauty and unblemished female bodies? I’m not sure, but if that was the intention, the delivery has the subtlety of a kick to the teeth, and feels like a perversion of a nice love story. Pygmalion fell for his own creation and felt he could never find a woman like that even before he made Galatea, but there’s no context of him ever bullying Galatea for getting all the normal flaws of a woman growing old. Everything in the myth indicates they were happy. So I think this was the wrong take for this myth.

If anything, this reminds me of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story The Birthmark, in which the protagonist, Aylmer, is so obsessed with a crimson hand-shaped facial birthmark very visible on his otherwise stunningly beautiful wife, Georgiana. By all accounts, she’s perfect, gorgeous, jaw-droppingly beautiful, but Aylmer can’t look past that birthmark, and being a talented man of science, he runs experiments in his lab until he finds an alchemical elixir that will erase that red birthmark. He makes Georgiana drink it, and the birthmark disappears indeed, much to his joy.

But Georgiana dies.

Maybe Miller had this story and its morale in mind and decided to juxtapose it on the Galatea/Pygmalion myth? I can only speculate. I don’t think these two stories are compatible, but if you interpret Pygmalion’s desire for beauty and perfection in his craft negatively along the lines of Aylmer’s pathological obsession with perfection, then you might see where the author might be coming from. But nonetheless, and whatever Miller had in mind, the fact remains that Galatea and Pygmalion aren’t a negative story in any way whatsoever. Hawthorne’s, on the other hand, definitely is.

Between the two, Galatea is the one that bothers me more. Mestra at least gives its heroine a triumph to work towards, however unearned, but here there is no triumph at all: just a woman disappearing into the sea and one of the few happy couples in Greek mythology warped into a cautionary tale the myth never asked for. If Miller wanted to write about men who can’t love a woman as she really is, there is no shortage of myths (and Hawthorne) that already do it from which to draw inspiration instead of this one.

GOODBYE TO ALL THAT: A New Phase and Reviewing Policy

02 Friday Oct 2026

Posted by in A Tale Transformed

≈ 16 Comments

The day that has been looming over for a long while is finally here. As of today, I am no longer going to be a reviewer.

Oh, don’t panic! I am not stopping writing reviews of retellings and dropping this B&B project. What I mean is that I will no longer review books in general, so for all intents and purposes, my little career as a fan reviewer is over.

It’s been fifteen long years since that day in December 2010 that I found Goodreads whilst chasing a by then already semi-inactive blogger I used to follow. I remember that, until that moment, I thought reviewers were professionals—or at least students—in fields related to writing and communications, and that you needed specific skills to review a book. That all the blogs and websites I followed for book news were full of people working in the publishing industry and related fields reinforced that impression. Then I looked round Goodreads, brimming with enthusiastic readers that posted everything from one-line hot takes to pages-long thoughtful recaps, and I thought, “Hey, I can do that too!”

Thus, from December 2010 to June 2026, I accumulated over 5,700 books read and rated, of which about 2,000 were reviewed. That’s impressive numbers even in my own eyes, I didn’t realise how invested I had become in this hobby. When I jumped in, I hadn’t thought of cataloguing or keeping track of books I read, I simply wanted to comment on what I read and what others read, perhaps because in real life I’m not a typical bookworm who discusses books.

It’s been an eventful adventure, all this reviewing. I experienced the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of it from authors, editors/publishers, and readers. I’d probably be able to write a book about all these experiences and what they taught me, the joys and struggles of putting your most honest and unfiltered thoughts about a book in words and dealing with the consequences.

Because, man, are there consequences.

But I won’t write about my experiences, that’s not the purpose of this post, and in any case I’m not one to look back on doors firmly shut.

So, a global balance will have to do.

If you asked me whether these 15 years of reviewing were worth it or not, I would say they mostly were. If you asked me if the scale tips in favour of positive or negative, I would say mostly negative. If you asked me whether there’s things I would do differently if I could walk back in time, I would say most assuredly yes. If you asked me if I have any regrets about this decision, I would say definitely not.

Those who have known me for long enough have witnessed the events that led me to stop reviewing, so no need to retread that. I did look for alternatives to continue, but the options were mightily unsatisfactory. Having separate places for reviews, making them private, etc., etc., I tried them all. This has been in the making for 3 years already, I’ve wanted to leave but at the same time I didn’t want to abandon my small loyal following, who have been with me these years and whom I deeply appreciate. Over the years, I lost some to sudden disappearances and even death, and I didn’t want to inflict a sudden disappearance on them; goodness knows enough brilliant people have been chased out of the internet by the toxicity.

The toxicity isn’t the entirety of it for me, however. It’s also that I feel like my time as a hyperactive reviewer unloading a few lines on every single book that fell in my hands is behind me, that I now have a purpose to work towards with my reviewing. Hence why my “retirement”—to call it somehow, hehe—applies to everything but retellings.

In other words, I will only review fairy tale retellings.

But even my fairy tale reviewing will now be focused and channeled into a goal, namely this website’s raison d’être, and to work towards that, I am going to implement the following changes:

  • I will no longer review other fairy tale retellings that aren’t “Beauty and the Beast.”

Or that have the same theme (the Maiden & Monster archetype specifically), which is wide enough a net that I will still be catching a tonne of new titles every month. B&B retellings alone are a huge number, so similarly-themed books add another chunk to the volume of books to read.

  •  “A Tale Transformed” will no longer include Animal Bridegroom tales.

When I created the B&B project here, the intention was to include retellings of the ATU 425 Animal Bridegroom tale type too, such as “The Frog Prince,” ”East of the Sun & West of the Moon,” ”Snow White and Rose Red,” etc., to give you an idea. Basically, any fairy and folktale retelling in which the leading character is an animal. This proved to be impractical, and too wide, as well as it left the door open to a flood of retellings of fairy tales that are popular to retell but extremely sloppily done.

Therefore, from now on, the ATU 425 type is excluded from the project, with very rare exceptions, namely, the tales closest to ATU 425C, which is B&B’s category. “Beauty and the Beast” is a subtype of its own; not every fairy tale with an animal/human is B&B by default like some might think. Motif (Maiden/Monster) will be more important than tale type (Animal Bridegroom) from now on.

  • Folkloric Fantasy books that are included will have to share the B&B motif or theme.

Like with the above, my initial goal was to include Folkloric Fantasy books at large that had interesting story premises, as this is a newfangled subgenre (credit to Beka Gremikova for naming it) I adore. Unfortunately, this is impractical for the same reasons as the above: too wide a net, too many titles published, and somewhat vaguely defined in terms of genre characteristics.

So, I’ll only include Folkloric Fantasy that has the B&B motif or theme. Should be easy enough, because many of the current Romantasy and Fantasy titles have B&B vibes without being proper retellings. I just won’t be doing reviews for the likes of The Unicorn Hunters, for example.

  • Some subtypes of “Beauty and the Beast” retellings will be excluded entirely.

Whilst there will be no blanket exclusion of genres, as I aim to have retellings in everything from Science Fiction to Historical Fiction to Manga, etc., and basically all genres and types of storytelling so long as it’s literary (e.g. written), there’s going to be exceptions for certain subgenres, such as:

  1. Erotica retellings.
  2. Billionaire romance retellings.
  3.  Mafia romance retellings.
  4. Harem/Why Choose retellings.
  5. Dub-Con and Non-Con retellings.
  6. Taboo romance retellings.
  7. Monster porn retellings.
  8. Dark romance retellings.
  9. Shifter retellings.

The last two might slip in the occasional exception when it’s a quality story, but as a whole all the above subgenres won’t be taken into account. There are many B&B retellings in these subgenres published independently or traditionally, and I am aware that they are for a large target audience, otherwise they wouldn’t exist (no public, no book). I don’t judge readers of these subgenres; the exclusion is based on the fact that as retellings of the fairy tale they don’t bring anything of value to the analysis table. They are largely wish-fulfillment, meant to meet a demand for kink and taboo fiction, in which B&B is either a decoration or an excuse for the kink-filled plot. A project like mine can’t go picking apart the ins and outs of these books—they are meant to be like that and not different—to point out issues and such the same way as with regular retellings. It would be as absurd as scolding a tiger for not being vegan.

I’ve accidentally picked up B&B retellings of this subtype before, like the one in which Beast is a dildo, for not keeping a careful eye on them. Now, I do have them tagged privately to avoid such incidents.

  • I will only review books that get 3 stars and up.

I’ve never posted only positive reviews and I don’t intend to embrace the “good vibes only” mentality, but for time management, pragmatism, and offering as much quality as possible to the readership, I won’t be posting 1-star and 2-star reviews anymore.

Which doesn’t mean you’ll never see a negative review from me ever again. But they will be cases when a book merits having it called out for precise content. Most books that get a low rating aren’t worth a full review, as they don’t have anything in particular to justify the investment, but some books do have content that deserves concise criticism.

I will still give books low ratings, but they’ll be private now and kept in personal records not open to the public. I want the B&B project to become a reference point long-term, for which keeping a meticulous catalogue of my ratings/notes is helpful. Maybe I’ll make it public one day when there’s a need of the data for research.

These are the Don’ts of my new and streamlined book review policy. The hope is that it improves the project’s quality and output, with more time and energy devoted to worthwhile stories. I have no illusions about this meaningfully impacting the toxicity aimed in my general direction, however. A decade and a half in this hobby have shown me that, when people wish so, they take issue even with neutral and high ratings.

Of course, there’s also new Dos to be added! Things I’m excited about that I will be implementing in the upcoming months, such as:

  • A “Beauty and the Beast” Hall of Fame.

Since the project launched in 2025, I have only been focusing on titles published during these past couple of years. Which sidesteps B&B retellings published before that deserve inclusion, so a Hall of Fame will be as a new addition, in which these older publications that are significant for historical importance, influence on authors, and cultural impact will be included.

I have hundreds of reviews of pre-2025 retellings over at Goodreads, which I’ve deleted with a placeholder “To reread and re-review” tag. These I plan to repost here from next year onwards, one a day, some as is and some rewritten and expanded. Many of those reviews are for books that are Hall of Fame material.

  • An “Illustrating ‘Beauty and the Beast’” section.

I didn’t intend to include visual arts retellings and adaptations of the tale in the beginning, partially because the project is literature-only and partially because there are already prizes and awards for visual retellings. With the exception of graphic novels/comics/manga, I wasn’t going to include films, serials, anime, documentaries, and still won’t.

However, picture book adaptations are going to have their own section, where illustrated interpretations of B&B will also be placed. It’s not going to be particularly extensive, though, because there’s awards like the Caldecott Medal that already cover the picture books market, so this section will be restricted to significant picture book adaptations only and not every single one published every year (which Children’s Literature and Picture Books reviewers already cover anyway).

Emphasis will be on illustrators in this section, as there’s a large pool of Beauty & Beast professional and fan-artists who publish or post online beautiful interpretations of the tale all the time, which are retellings too. Professor Jack D. Zipes sees illustrations of fairy tales as a form of retelling, and I agree with him.

  • Comparative book analyses in “A Tale Transformed: Re-examining ‘Beauty and the Beast’.”

This is another unexpected byproduct of reviewing retellings: I saw some authors tend to tackle the same fairy tale from different angles more than once, and for me it’s a rewarding intellectual exercise to do a compare-and-contrast analysis of their retellings.

So, to live up to the “re-examining” part of the project’s name, you will be seeing comparative reviews from now on. This section will also include analyses of books that the authors didn’t intend to be retellings but that have the motif/theme anyway. You have no idea how many authors do B&B “faux-retellings”—or meta-retellings, a term I coined—without realising it, because the B&B archetype is just . . . there, and not always consciously used in storytelling.

  • Guest posters will be invited to write for the project.

Mainly for non-fiction books about or that touch on the fairy tale, because I have no formal education in folkloric and tale scholarship and feel like I don’t quite cover the area adequately. I do interact with people who possess the know-how and the academic formation, fortunately, that will be invited to write for A Tale Transformed.

And because there’s genres and subgenres I don’t usually read or read very little of, there will also be guest posters that are well-versed in said genres and subgenres from time to time. My personal tastes shouldn’t stand in the way of an inclusive project.

  • The ‘Best Of’ yearly award will finally have a physical prize for the winners.

This was the goal for last year, but had to be postponed for a host of pesky interferences. I am happy to let you know that there’s a physical award currently in the works with a professional artist that will be given to the author or authors of the books that win the Best Retelling award that I announce in the December round-up post.

That’s it! Looks like a lot to do, huh? But it’s something far more rewarding and fulfilling than reviewing at random all and any books like I’ve been doing for decades. I shall continue to read as widely and eclectically as always, but will not share them in the open. I have no regrets about deleting my thousands of GR reviews (save for a small handful), because they weren’t in vain and the memories stay with me forever.

I know most of my friends and followers don’t read me for my fairy tale retellings, and some of them even hate retellings, so I expect many to hit the unfollowing button. No regrets there either. But, deep down, I would like to think you appreciate my stuff enough to continue following me even if you never read what I do.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Angela Slatter

16 Tuesday Jun 2026

Posted by in PTP TWOW, The Fairy Whisperers

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Welcome to Conversations with Fairy Whisperers, Angela! As a big fan of your work, it’s a dream come true to have you here with us. Tell us about yourself, how did you become a writer?

Thank you so much for inviting me along, Marquise. I’ve always been a very big reader, and one day I guess I just decided I would try being a writer—it must have been the right choice as I’ve been doing it for twenty years now.

I started by doing some study in creative writing, and while I was doing that, I was also able to get some pieces published, which encouraged me to keep going. I kind of began with short stories, then stepped up to novellas, then novels. I love what I do and can’t imagine doing anything else.

You have published several books in the Fantasy, Horror, and Paranormal genres, which I understand are your preferred genres. You have a characteristic storytelling style that incorporates fairy tales and diverse fae and supernatural folklore into your books, giving them a distinct Folkloric Fantasy vibe that sets them apart from mainstream Fantasy, and often gives them a fairy tale atmosphere. What fascinates you about fairy tales and how did you begin introducing them into your stories?

I think it started for me in childhood, having my mother read fairy tales to me at bedtime, so they were my earliest stories and have remained my favourites even as I grew up and became a writer myself. I think as you mature you realise that these stories are much more layered and complex than they at first appear, and I think that there’s still so much to be gained from them as both an adult reader and writer.

Fairy tales underpin so much of a person’s life, from thought patterns and beliefs to hope and dreams—and nightmares. I’m really interested in the dark side of such tales, the stuff that isn’t talked about so much in the Disneyfied versions. The first fairy tale I re-wrote was “The Little Match Girl,” which I remembered causing me many tears as a child because of its unfairness; so I think I started with that one first because it was a place to start unpicking a lot of my own fears.

What I try to do with my writing now, the stories in the Sourdough universe, is explore a world that has one foot in fantasy and the other in what looks like a familiar version of the ‘real’ world—so that even stories that don’t look like a rewriting of an older tale, still have a degree of recognizability because of some of their elements, so they feel familiar, like something you might have heard before, but which is still strange and unknown.

Of all the styles and formats fairy and folktales and retellings come in—pictorial, screen, graphic, illustrated, or written—which do you most favour?

Oh, I think it has to be written for me. I’m a writer, after all, and the joy is in the words and the style and the way an author is building a world for you! But I also love the graphic novel form—some of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy stories involve fairy and folktale reworkings and they are just incredible.

And illustrated versions can give incredible visual interpretations of the story—when an artist like Abigail Larson or Audrey Benjaminsen gets hold of a fairy tale the result can be truly amazing. And a film like The Company of Wolves or Pan’s Labyrinth have some absolutely stunning imagery, especially when there’s not such a concern about making everything pretty and sanitized—I think the rough and raw edges make it look more believable.

Your literary output is laden with elements and plots borrowed from fairy stories, some famous and some obscure. Do you have a favourite fairy tale or folktale? What aspects of it appeal to you personally, and why?

Ah, it’s always hard to pick a favourite! I love a lot of the “Donkeyskin” versions, like “All-kinds-of-fur,” “Mossycoat,” “Catskin,” et cetera. I think what appeals to me as a writer is that they’re all tales about girls saving themselves, not staying in terrible situations. It’s probably also why I love Bluebeard kinds of tales like “The Robber Bridegroom,” “Mr Fox,” “The Oxford Student,” et cetera. I’m a fan of self-saving-princess stories.

“Self-saving princesses” is a perfect description for my absolute favourite of all your work so far, the Sourdough Universe series, which comprises five full novels and several short stories, and some of them are easily recognised as retellings of a certain tale whilst others are only vaguely reminiscent of the inspiration or source tale. In your opinion, what makes a retelling stand out? What do you consider the joys and challenges of writing in this specific subgenre?

I think what makes a retelling stand out is how far you can push it from its origins, add in new details, but still have a hint of the original story still at its core.

There’s a wonderful version of the Robber bridegroom tale by Cassandra Khaw called “A Leash of Foxes, Their Stories Like Barter.” I won’t give the story away, but she’s shifted whose story it is to tell, which makes the whole ending come out differently. Then there’s Francesca Lia Block’s “Blue,” which is a modern version of Bluebeard set in LA—it has some familiar elements, but the story’s been stretched away from the original version, so it feels both familiar and strange. I think you can do this by shifting point of view, who your narrator is, changing the setting in terms of time period or cultural landscape; you might retain themes but attach them to different imagery or plot points.

The Sourdough Compendium is coming out in June this year, and it’s a reprint of all my mosaic collections set in this world—I think you can see from the original tales in the first collection, then to those in the second and third how I change the amount the stories are stretched and changed from their origins. I think I definitely got better at that the more writing practice I go, so the bones of the stories in the Sourdough section are probably more recognizable as old tales than those in the Bitterwood or Tallow-Wife sections. I think my joy in writing in this subgenre comes from examining “What can I do here that looks new, but feels familiar? How far can I push this? People will also see different things in your work, too—with A Forest, Darkly the main fairy tale in my head was “Hansel and Gretel,” but another reviewer saw “Little Red Riding Hood” in it far more strongly.

The five Sourdough novels tend to blend several tales into one story rather than use only one tale per story. Is this a deliberate choice on your part or just the way a story develops during the writing process? What fairy tale would you say is the most complicated to reinvent, and why?

I think what I do more of with the novels is have a particular idea or feeling or pain that I want to explore. So, while All the Murmuring Bones is a Gothic mystery set in opposition to “The Little Mermaid” (one of my most hated fairy tales), what I was wanting to do was see how I could upend the traditional Gothic girl stereotype. Part of that took the form of stripping mermaids back from the harmless little Ariels they’ve been turned into and making them into dangerous creatures again—and I suppose that fits in with making girls in gothic stories tough and dangerous again, and not such easy prey.

With The Path of Thorns, I wanted to upend the “governess goes to remote estate and falls in love with a terrible man and redeems him” cliché, so Asher Todd is a character who’s coming with her own agenda and she’s going to do damage. She’s the anti-Jane Eyre, really!

The Briar Book of the Dead has a lot of ghost story elements and the story question for me was “What if you’re not the chosen one but you’ve got to clean up everyone’s mess?”

For The Crimson Road, I was again picking at destinies and also the position of oldest children who are given responsibilities when they shouldn’t.

With A Forest, Darkly, I wanted to interrogate ideas about how and if we can make amends for things we did in the past, for whatever reasons.

The next novel, Our Lady of Battles, is looking at the idea of what happens if you’ve been trained to do something your whole life, and that is getting something for someone else – what happens when all your hard work is given away?

In your opinion, what fairy tale is the most complicated to reinvent, and why?

I’m honestly not sure which fairy tale is hardest to reinvent! I mean, you want to make the story different enough that a reader feels they’re getting something new! It’s something I kind of play with in the novels because I always have inserts of made-up lore or tales that are meant to be books from my characters’ lives or stories that they’re told, so there’s the element of changing details there that feel like they make the old stories feel strange and new.

We know you’re going to release The Sourdough Compendium in June, that collects all the short stories in the same universe as the novels, and of course we would love to read new stories, especially if you were to do a direct “Beauty and the Beast” retelling set in this universe [laugh]. Do you have any plans to write more Sourdough novels or stories?

Haha! I will see what I can do about a “Beauty and the Beast” reworking!

Our Lady of Battles is about a young woman who’s spent her life fighting to regain the throne of a city-state, Five Ports. She’s modelled herself on the city’s St Callwen, who was its founder. The book starts just after the last battle and I’m specifically looking at what happens now? All these Epic Fantasies generally finish with the big battle, but I want to see what happens after that—when the big goal has been achieved, who starts fighting again?

After that, the next novel is The Scarred Queen, which I think will be a pirate adventure? And I have three more Sourdough books pitched to Titan that I’m hoping will be contracted soon! So, yes, plans for more novels.

My first encounter with your work was the anthology A Feast of Sorrows,which contains three short stories entitled “The Jacaranda Wife,” “The Badger Bride,” and “Bearskin,” which made an impression on me and sent me looking for more. My library had two other anthologies, The Girl With No Hands and Other Tales and Sourdough and Other Stories, in which I found “The Chrysanthemum Bride” and “Porcelain Soul” respectively. These five stories have thematic similarities to“Beauty and the Beast,” a favourite tale on this site, in terms of transformation, monstrosity/otherness and humanity, and redemption. How did you come across the idea for these five stories, and what can you tell us about its creative process?

Oh gosh! “The Jacaranda Wife” was my attempt to write a fairy tale that could be said to be Australian—but I also wanted to acknowledge issues like colonization, rather than write something ‘pretty.’ I’d had the idea of a woman being born from a tree for a while and that became the core of it.

“The Badger Bride” was my attempt at something that would fit under the banner of “animal brides/husbands,” and I also love badgers and books, and wanted to see if I could combine them—and this story also links with two others in the Bitterwood collection (“The Burnt Moon” and “The Undone and the Divine”).

“Bearskin” came about because I’d been reading about bears in folklore and there’s an idea that bears are connected to healing and medicine in older cultures, plus this story is part of the Tallow-Wife collection and deals with ideas about lost children and also redemption.

“The Chrysanthemum Bride” came about after I read about a series of murders in China years ago where women were being murdered to be sold as “afterlife brides” to parents with dead, unmarried sons.

“Porcelain Soul” was in the Sourdough collection and it started after I read a quote from Rilke about how dolls are (and I’m going to quote this badly because it was a long time ago!) little abysses into which children pour affection with never getting anything back; the idea that came out of that was what if there were dollmakers who put a little sliver of their own soul into the toys they made?

Many authors who started their careers writing retellings later abandon fairy tale retellings for other genres and story ideas. Do you plan to continue writing retellings in your chosen genres or will you move on to other different projects?

I think I’ll definitely keep my hand in with fairy tales, I love them, after all, and I do think they’re infinitely adaptable.

I also write other things that are more contemporary Horror, short stories and novellas. The Cold House is a novella that came out last year and it’s very much a modern Horror story; Fitcher’s Bird, which is out this year is contemporary Horror AND a reworking of an old fairy tale. I’ve got a few more novellas in the pipeline that are more Horror and less fairy tale.

And speaking of your literary production, I counted fifteen books you have published as A. G. Slatter and thirty as Angela Slatter. That’s an impressive number for any author! Is there a book or books you are the proudest of, and why?

Thank you. I have been writing for a while now!

And again, it’s really hard to have a favourite amongst my book babies. There’s something I love about every one of them; I love Asher in The Path of Thorns, but I also really adore Mehrab in A Forest, Darkly—maybe their personalities are a bit alike, and Mehrab is who Asher would turn into at the same age. I really like Emlyn from Our Lady of Battles as I’m still getting to know her and dig into her personality, and I love Ellie Briar from The Briar Book of the Dead  because she’s very pragmatic and has overcome so much and made hard decisions. I really love The Bitterwood Bible collection because it won a World Fantasy Award and I felt like writing that helped me kick my writing skills up a notch.

Some readers have compared you to Angela Carter, a heavyweight of fairy tale retellings, and you’ve paid homage to one of her most famous retellings, “In the Company of Wolves,” in one of your anthologies. Is there any other author who you view as a role model for your writing?

I think that tale is probably “Red Skein,” which is my version of “Little Red Riding Hood”—there were ideas I wanted to play with that felt like an extension of what Carter did in all her wolf stories.

Another role model for me is Tanith Lee, specifically her Flat Earth series, which also use that mosaic structure in each book. I think I probably learned that lovely interlinked structure from her, how best to place stories next to each other for maximum effect like choosing gems for a necklace.

If there was a Hall of Fame for retold fairy and folktales, which would you consider the best retold stories books and why are they worthy of inclusion in said Hall of Fame?

Oh wow, too hard to choose! Definitely you’d include Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, Tanith Lee’s Night’s Master, Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch, a bunch of Christina Henry’s novels, Kell Woods’ After the Forest, Jodie Matthews’ Meet Me at the Surface is amazing and works with folklore, Emma Rose’s Lamb is amazingly mythical and original, C. J. Cooke’s The Ghost Woods, and I think Neil Sharpson’s The Burial Tide would have to go in, too.

That list is not complete!

But it’s an amazing list anyway! Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us, Angela. We will be keeping an eye on your future books, which we hope shall be many more in the years to come.

You’re more than welcome!

“The Sourdough Compendium” by A. G. Slatter

16 Tuesday Jun 2026

Posted by in A Tale Transformed

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

If I had to pick a quote that encapsulates the essence of all the stories contained in this Compendium, it would be this one:

“Once upon a time on the far side of yesterday, in a land that never was, in a time that could never be, there lived girls who chose their own fate…”

It’s poetic, fairy tale-like in its phrasing, and sharp in its messaging. But above all, it describes the book’s theme so accurately, because the stories in The Sourdough Compendium are all about women that chose their fates.

Some are victims, some are perpetrators, and some are simply hit by the consequences of their own dumb decisions, but none of the main character girls sits down to wait for things to change through an external actor. They all take the bull by the horns, even when it means illegally or immorally taking the law into their own hands. Angela Slatter likes her women to spread all over the moral spectrum: saints, sinners, and most often ambiguous, which takes me to my second favourite quote to describe female characters in this collection, from the author’s Notes:

. . . her moral compass hasn’t worked in a while.

The Sourdough Compendium is a reprinted anthology of anthologies. It contains three collections of short stories—“The Bitterwood Bible & Other Recountings,” “Sourdough & Other Stories,” and “The Tallow-Wife & Other Tales”—some of which are fairy tale retellings whose source tale is easily recognisable, but most of which are original stories by Slatter that drink so deeply from folkloric wells that they could pass for new traditional fairy tales. They share a common world, the Sourdough Universe, which comprises five full novels (not included here) and the 41 short stories of the anthologies. It’s an impressive amount of world-building, rich and detailed enough that it deserves its own planet, like Tolkien’s or Martin’s works. I’d even say this is Slatter’s own Middle-earth.

Continue reading →

“Death’s Rose” by R. I. Aryn

11 Thursday Jun 2026

Posted by in A Tale Transformed

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, ,

Everywhere you look, you see this book described as Bridgerton meets Once Upon a Broken Heart and Beauty and the Beast. If I were to calculate the degree of influence each of the three inspirational sources had on it, I would say that it is:

45% Bridgerton

40% OUABH

15% B&B.

I am, naturally, speaking thematically. Not the actual proportions of on-page time allocated to each source of inspiration, but the global influence each has on the plot of Death’s Rose.

Each of these has a well-defined narrative demarcation, that makes it feel like braiding two thick cords and one thin thread to create a beautifully solid rope. Bridgerton and OUABH are the cords, and B&B is the bright silk thread that enlivens and adds colour to the braided rope but doesn’t really add to its constitution. Meaning, Death’s Rose isn’t a book that can be judged as a Beauty and the Beast retelling (which it isn’t), but it can definitely be assessed by how it incorporates the key element of the fairy tale that it has borrowed—the curse and its origins—into a story that’s pretty much its own whilst still drawing heavily from two major non-fairy tale sources.

Many books that borrow only elements or scenes from the fairy tale end up using them as purely aesthetic props, decorative in nature. Not so this book; it makes the B&B element part of its moving machinery, and therein lies its strength.

Continue reading →

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Kate Stradling

06 Saturday Jun 2026

Posted by in The Fairy Whisperers

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Welcome to Conversations with Fairy Whisperers, Kate! I have been following your work throughout the years since I first picked up one of your books, and it’s exciting to have you as our guest today. Tell us about yourself, how did you become a writer?

Thank you for having me! I’m honored to be here.

I didn’t really intend to become a writer. I started when I was 13, but as a form of escape. I’d been an avid reader, and the desire to create my own stories formed naturally from that. However, I also carried a lot of social trauma. So, the solitude of story-crafting formed a safe refuge when I became too overwhelmed or anxious throughout my teenaged years. I did it in private without any expectations of ever sharing my work.

It took me over a decade to even complete a first draft. By then I’d also collected a couple of English degrees. At that point, I figured, why not give writing a year or two in earnest? And I just never quit. Basically, I eased into this profession inch by inch until I was too far immersed to retreat.

Your author bibliography lists a varied assortment of books in which retellings stand out. Of all the styles and formats retellings come in—pictorial, screen, graphic, illustrated, or written—which do you most favour as an author and as a reader?

I’m a sucker for variation, and the written word seems to offer the most options in that regard. Even though I loved animated and live-action retellings earlier in my life, if I’m in the mood for a retelling nowadays, I’m searching novels rather than any other medium. However, I do love to put different retellings of the same tale side by side, all different styles and formats welcome. The more variety, the better.

If my maths are correct, you have published five fairy tale retellings to date: of Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, King Thrushbeard twice, and two obscure folktales. What fascinates you about fairy tales and how did you start writing retellings of them?

Fairy tales have a built-in cultural appeal. They contain distilled motifs and messages, which transfer readily to more developed stories. That in turn creates an excellent laboratory for learning story-craft. So, with the exception of Goldmayne, my fairy tale retellings have all been kind of academic in nature. They were exercises for me to write within specific boundaries and to explore well-known story beats from different angles.

I’ve experimented with Point of View (Brine and Bone, “The Little Mermaid” told from the perspective of “the other woman”), in medias res storytelling, (Soot and Slipper, “Cinderella” starting with news of the royal ball instead of backstory on her family situation), and character motivations (Maid and Minstrel, “King Thrushbeard” but justifying why the haughty princess might insult all her suitors).

In each of these, the source tale provides structure while allowing space for creativity.

As for my “King Thrushbeard” period, in addition to Maid and Minstrel and The Beggar Prince, I also have a third, Thrushbeard, that’s a perma-free urban fantasy novelette (link: https://BookHip.com/SLFDGFG). When I wrote Maid and Minstrel, I wasn’t entirely happy with the outcome. I’d focused so much on justifying my princess that I felt like I lost some of the original tale’s appeal. So, I ported it into a UF setting and let my protagonist be genuinely critical instead of defensively lashing out. Then I had an opportunity to write it again, but from the male’s perspective instead in The Beggar Prince.

Each iteration retains pieces of the original tale but has its unique angles as well—kind of like when an artist paints the same scene at different times of day to study how light and shadows fall. (e.g., Claude Monet; I particularly adore his Cathedral at Rouen series. My “Thrushbeard” retellings represent a similar exercise, but in words instead of paint.)

I love your description of fairy tales as laboratories for storycraft! Do you have a favourite fairy tale? What aspects of it appeal to you personally, and why?

My favorite fairy tale is the pair “Scurvyhead” and “Sir Goldenhair” from an obscure collection called The Golden Phoenix and Other Tales. I love the practical-minded main character, Petit Jean, his sassy talking horse, and the adventures they tumble into together. It’s such a fun underdog-hero story, with classic fairy tale vibes but enough uniqueness to feed my aforementioned desire for variation.

Which is why, when I used it as my inspiration for Goldmayne, it got the full-length novel treatment instead of being a short-novel/novella length. I wanted to shine a bright light on a little known but precious corner of folklore.

You also have written at least two retellings of Classics, Beowulf and The Blue Castle. What motivated you to write “The Legendary Inge” and “Deathmark”? And is there a difference in writing or researching for a retelling of a fairy tale and one of a Classic?

My motivation for those two titles stemmed from love of the original sources. The Blue Castle is one of my favorites from L.M. Montgomery, but it’s lesser known in her canon. As for Beowulf, I didn’t originally like it but had to translate it for one of my grad school courses and fell in love during that process. In both cases, I wanted to pay homage to stories that helped shaped my love of literature.

For me, Classics occupy a different cultural space than fairy tales, so their retellings feel different during my creative process. There’s only one source instead of a dozen variations, and it’s more developed, particularly with regards to Character and Dialogue. I tend to focus more on which themes to extract and how to polish them rather than on how to hit story elements beat by beat.

As such, my Classic “retellings” have fewer similarities to their inspirations than my fairy tales. While The Legendary Inge was inspired by Beowulf and Deathmark was inspired by The Blue Castle, I don’t consider them true retellings. Instead, their sources lent me a framework and/or themes that acted as a springboard into new narrative territory.

And theoretically, fairy tales can do the same thing; I just haven’t used them that way. When I’m rewriting a fairy tale, my approach is from a structural/story beat angle, whereas when I use a Classic as inspiration, it’s more like “this, but fantasy” (Beowulf, but fantasy; The Blue Castle, but fantasy), and the “but fantasy” part generally takes over, with echoes of the Classic scattered across the text.

In your opinion, what makes a retelling stand out? What do you consider the joys and challenges of writing in this specific subgenre?

This is such an interesting question. For me, successful retellings either honor or elevate the themes of the original source. I guess that’s a pretty subjective metric. When you’re retelling a story, though, it’s not wholly yours. It wouldn’t exist without its source material, and it comes with a built-in audience that demands respect. Retellings that stand out are able to build on the bones of the original story, adding new perspectives or depths without trampling over beloved elements.

The joys and challenges are two sides of the same coin. It’s challenging to reframe a tale everyone knows, but so satisfying when you find the right angle of approach. Stories worth retelling generally hold insight into the human experience, so the act of reinvention naturally broadens my understanding of other people and of the world I live in. When all the pieces come together, it’s extremely fulfilling.

Excellent point about the success of retellings being tied to respect and elevation of a tale’s themes, it’s something I always harp on her. And on that note, what fairy tale would you say is the most complicated to reinvent, and why?

This might be controversial, but I’m going to say “Cinderella.” It’s been written and rewritten so many times that sincere retellings can feel stale by default, but the more “inventive” ones can feel contrived. To further complicate things, it’s an archetype story (rags to riches), which means it can also act as a structural trope for non-retellings. Because it’s been examined and reproduced from so many angles already—and through so many different media—reinvention is a monumental task. The field has been picked over, which leaves temptation to bring in grain from elsewhere.

Granted, if someone portrays Cinderella as a housemaid by day and a master-thief-assassin by night, I’ll still read it. It’s difficult to keep the story’s integrity under such drastic settings, though, and that integrity is what makes the original tale—or any original fairy tale—so special.

You’re the second author I’ve interviewed that chooses Cinderella, a surprising choice for sure. As for Classics that are difficult to reinvent or modernise, is there one that that you’ve been intrigued by but that you find intimidating to retell?

Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo. I love a good revenge story and would love to pull this one into a fantasy setting, but it has so many threads going on, plus the expectations of the book audience vs. the various film audiences. I do find it too intimidating to attempt, but maybe someday I’ll work up the courage.

You recently published Yes, Your Serpentine Excellency, a comedic Georgette Heyer-reminiscent Fantasy of Manners that is thematically like “Beauty and the Beast,” although it’s not meant as a retelling of the tale. How did you come across the idea for this story, and what can you tell us about its creative process?

It started from a pitch to use the Forced Proximity trope and developed from there. I imagined a hero who was cursed but didn’t mind, and a heroine who was fearless and thus bored with her life. This led me to develop the magic system, then the setting and supporting characters, then the necessary plot.

I’m an intuitive writer, so my creative process doesn’t come in a set pattern other than to pay attention when inspiration strikes. For this book, that happened over a period of roughly two years, with the bulk of my drafting in the last couple of months before completion. I was struggling with burnout when I started, though, and some of my narrative choices are a reflection of that. Instead of worrying about whether an audience existed for this odd book I was crafting, I wrote something I wanted to read.

I’m so glad others have enjoyed it too!

My co-host and myself are dragon fangirls here on Pawn to Player, as are many of our readers. We love all the dragon tropes! Serpentine Excellency made me curious about your thoughts on mythical beasts, do you have a favourite fantastical creature?

I love the different chimera types: griffons, unicorns, etc. If it’s a mishmash of multiple animal parts, I’m fascinated. My one exception is if human faces are involved. Not a fan of manticores, not a huge mermaid or centaur aficionado, and I can take or leave the sphynx but love the animal-headed members of the Egyptian pantheon. Not sure what that says about me, other than that I don’t want my monsters to express human emotions.

(This is why the mermaids from Brine and Bone are more angler-fish looking without their glamours, by the way.)

On the matter of tropes, you have a lovely descriptive tagline: “Handcrafted Fantasy Made from the Finest Tropes.” How do you decide which tropes or archetypes to twist and which to use as they are?

It’s not exactly a conscious decision. Mostly, I’m just looking for an interesting angle to use any given trope. Some tropes are fun just as they are, while others become more interesting when they flout expectations. Sometimes, they’re just asking for a twist.

For example, “forced proximity” usually involves tension between the two parties: they don’t want to be together, either because of dislike or embarrassment, so the trope causes narrative friction. And it’s a fun trope as-is! But I’d already used it that way in Guardian of Ruses. So in Yes, Your Serpentine Excellency, the two parties don’t mind being together (a twist), which means the tension has to come from somewhere else.

This really ties back to my love of variation. I struggle with a fear of accidentally writing the same story over and over. As a result, I naturally look for narrative opportunities to veer into the weeds. If I use a trope or archetype straight in one book, I’m more likely to twist it in another.

I would say you’re unlikely to fall into that trap, seeing as you wrote two books that are hard to fit into a genre. Both “Namesake” and “The Heir and the Spare” feel as though they exist in a genre somewhere in-between Fairy Tale and Fantasy, with elements from both yet still a different type of story. Our first interviewee here, Beka Gremikova (a big fan of yours, she tells me) also writes like this and calls it Folkloric Fantasy. Is there a particular approach that created the atmosphere of Folkloric Fantasy when you were writing these books that separates them from your traditional retellings?

I like the term “Folkloric Fantasy.” It’s not something I’ve really considered before, but I hope it catches in popularity. Props to Beka for coining it!

I’ve always just tossed these two books in my “original stories” bin. Namesake is a portal fantasy and The Heir and the Spare is technically a thriller in a fantasy setting. They’re both outliers in my catalogue, for different reasons. (That being said, most of my books are outliers from one another. I write what intrigues me in the moment, and it seems I have the creative attention span of a caffeinated hummingbird.)

I don’t recall a particular approach in crafting these two books. In fact, their writing processes were vastly different. Namesake was a struggle, with so much second-guessing and revision, whereas The Heir and the Spare went from idea to publication in 6 months (one of its outlier qualities). However, when I write original stories, I do feel a heavier burden with regards to the story-craft, because the reader won’t have a built-in touchpoint like they do with retellings. In general, I ascribe to minimalist world-building, but I feel like this is most apparent in my original work. I let my readers fill in a lot more gaps than they probably realize they’re filling in, and that might contribute to the Folkloric Fantasy atmosphere.

It’s not that I put it there, but that the Reader is adding it based on a degree of shared humanity/culture.

Do you ever yourself writing an original fairy tale as opposed to a retelling of one?

No. The task itself is daunting, but I’m also not drawn to the Panoramic Method-style storytelling that most fairy tales use. I’m happy writing novels instead.

If there was a Hall of Fame for retold fairy tales, which would you consider the best retold stories and why are they worthy of inclusion in said Hall of Fame?

Beauty by Robin McKinley; this is the first retelling I can remember reading, and it sets a high standard not only for “Beauty and the Beast” interpretations, but for fairy tale retellings in general.

Ever After (1998); this film is my favorite “Cinderella” retelling, a fun and sincere interpretation.

Is there an author or authors who make you think “I wish I could write like that”?

I love Diana Wynne Jones and Jonathan Stroud. They both have such evocative prose, and they’re willing to entangle their characters in dangerous and/or complicated situations. I sometimes worry that I coddle mine too much, haha.

One writing characteristic of yours is your sense of humour that shines in your blogging, your talks, and your writing. In transferring this sense of comedy and absurdity into your stories, how do you balance humour with high stakes plots?

In my view, humor seasons high stakes really well. So, I like to insert levity as a sort of pressure release when the story gets too intense. I will admit, though: this happens in part because I have trouble taking myself seriously. When my writing turns grim, my first instinct is to crack a joke.

And it’s not that I’m trying to be funny, but that humor is part of humanity. Even a one-line quip can add dimension to an otherwise flat scene or prevent a serious moment from becoming overwrought. It’s a potent way for characters to connect at high-stress moments, and ultimately, a good story revolves around those connections.

Authors often say that having to pick a favourite book amongst their literary output is like making them choose a favourite child, so I apologise for Sophie’s Choice-ing you with this question to wrap up our interesting talk. Do you have a favourite story that you have written? Or one that holds more sentimental value to you than the rest?

The Legendary Inge has perhaps the most sentimental value. It’s a small homage to my Swedish grandmother, so it’s populated with nods to that heritage, including some little details that only people in my family would catch.

As for a favorite, I’m always seeking the shiny, new idea. By the time my books are published, I’ve spent so many hours with them that they’ve dulled to my senses. I do love most of my work, but I could identify my problem children easier than picking which one I most prefer. (I won’t, but I could.)

Thank you for this enjoyable conversation, Kate! We will be keeping an eye on all and every one of your future books, as always.

This was fun! Thank you so much!

“Thrushbeard” by Kate Stradling

06 Saturday Jun 2026

Posted by in A Tale Transformed

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

All fairy tale lovers have a fairy tale as a nemesis, and so do authors of fairy tale retellings.

Kate Stradling’s nemesis must be the Grimms’ fairy tale “King Thrushbeard.” I say that half-jokingly because she’s already done three retellings of it to date. And when an author returns to the same fairy tale again and again, it’s for one of two reasons: either they like it very much, or it bothers them very much.

Which of the two applies to Kate’s case? You’ll have to read the interview I did with her and draw your own conclusions.

I myself have a few fairy tales as my nemeses, amongst them “King Thrushbeard.” I have a theory about why it’s such a difficult tale for retellers to crack: the trap it sets is the temptation to whitewash two of its three morally grey main characters. The original fairy tale works precisely because all three—the king, the princess, and Thrushbeard—are at fault, all three are unlikable, and the redemption at the end is imperfect but earned. Strip that moral complexity away to make a romance more palatable to the modern readership, and the whole structure collapses.

Stradling fell into this trap twice before, in my opinion, finally sidestepping it in her second attempt, Thrushbeard, the retelling I’m going to focus on in this review.

Continue reading →