Glorious Stories

Buckle up for a lengthy post, my readers… Spoiler alert, there is an exciting announcement at the end!

No matter how many years pass, I cannot seem to leave the world of fairy tales alone. I’ve wandered once again into those adventurous passages and emerged with a new novel Thief Witch, & Liar, coming to you on May 25th! This time, the story will be a retelling of one of Andrew Lang’s tales, “Prunella”.

If you’ve been reading my works, or if you know me as a person, you probably know that I love folk tales and mythology, and that they are in a large part what got me into writing in the first place (the ending of “Daedalus and Icarus” was wholly unsatisfactory and demanded a re-write, in my child-self’s opinion). Andrew Lang’s collections hold some of my favorite tales of all.

Based on an Italian story and published in Lang’s The Gray Fairy Book, Prunella is a delightful story of kidnapping, jealousy, impossible tasks, threats of murder, debatable attempts at coercion, and definite power imbalances. Yes, I am being ironic… but also literal! Fairy tales are wild, I tell you. But honestly, I mean it when I say it’s delightful. An exciting adventure with some hair-raising moments of bravery, and heartwarming acts of kindness. In it, a seven-year-old child named Prunella is discovered to have been ignorantly stealing plums from a witch’s orchard. Utterly without mercy or understanding, the Witch takes her captive as punishment for her crimes, and plans to have her revenge when it’s nice and cold. However, as the years pass and Prunella matures into a beautiful young woman, she eventually attracts the attention of the Witch’s son, Bensiabel, who seems to be at odds with his mother in a rather strange way.

This story is in the same vein of stories as “Rapunzel”! You may recognize the similarities–theft from a witch’s garden (or orchard, in this case), the stealing of a child to pay for the crime, anger and jealousy… The similarities pretty much end there, however. Since I’m about to put out a whole book on it, I won’t go much further into the plot. But if you’re really curious and can’t wait to know the end, the tale is easy enough to find in various online archives of fairy tales.

I read “Prunella” for the first time only a few years ago, and it immediately fascinated me. It holds some intriguing ideas that distinguish it from other fairy tales, and it just wouldn’t leave me alone. I knew right away that I wanted to adapt it someday into a full novel. This year, while I was busy writing the final book in my Rise of Ralienah Saga, I hit a major writing slump, and I needed something to keep me working. If I stop writing, you see, it’s very hard to start again. So the deal was, every time it gets hard to work on Ralienah, I work on Prunella instead. Well, one thing led to another, and it turns out that Prunella was just the book I needed to write.

Though the basic plot was already done for me, the fun part was making it my own. Fairy tales aren’t rich in detail, after all! I chose to write in first-person perspective, which was a new style for me. I renamed Prunella to Daniela, took the liberty of raising her starting age from seven to twenty-two, and set the whole story in a fantasy world heavily inspired by late 1500s Italy. I got nerdy and researched foods and inventions and literature to create a flavorful world for the characters to inhabit. At some point, the final title emerged as Thief, Witch, & Liar, inspired by each of the three central characters, Daniela, the Witch, and Bensiabel.

Speaking of characters, they were my favorite part of the writing process. Looking at the actions they take in the original fairy tale left me with a lot of questions. Why did the characters behave in such a way? What kind of person would make the choices presented in the tale? What emotional affects might certain events have on the characters involved? And how could I connect seemingly random elements common in folklore to create a cohesive, character-driven plot with multiple layers?

All of these questions led to a delicious and exciting writing process, and I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing. It came together faster than any book I have ever written in my life. Before long, it was done, and I was thrilled to realize I could get it ready for a spring release.

Currently, my beta readers are wrapping up their process, and I am receiving their comments. After I’ve made adjustments to the book accordingly, there’ll be one final edit, and by May 25th, there will be a new Adult Fiction Fairy Tale Retelling on Amazon’s shelves. In fact, that brings me to my exciting announcement!

Thief, Witch, & Liar is now available for pre-order on Kindle! If your interest has been piqued by any of this long ramble, follow this link and sign up for your digital copy today! On may 25th it will automatically be delivered to your account. There will also be a print version, so keep an eye out for that. Also stay tuned for updates on the official cover, as well as quotes and character features to debut soon.

And there you have it! This is what I’ve been up to for the last few months, and what I’ll be up to for the next two months at least. Thank you, as always, for reading!

–Emmarayn