Fairy tale giveaway!

More than 50 books are up for grabs in this giveaway, including The Summer Garden, my retelling of Beauty and the Beast. Here's the link.

Fantasy freebies.

The Summer Garden, my 11,000 word retelling of "Beauty and the Beast, is available in this Instafreebie giveaway. Grab it now!!

Beauty and the Beast Retold--free on kindle this weekend

Beauty and the Beast is one of my favorite fairy tales. I cannot wait to see the movie when it opens this weekend. The Summer Garden is my version of the fairy tale, a novelette that's free on Amazon through the weekend.

Free Fantasy and Science Fiction (and horror) Book Promotion

Once again, multi-genre best-selling author Patty Jansen has put together a freebie promotion, and this one is a doozy. Some of the goodies you can snag include Kate Danley's beautiful Queen Mab, and Chosen, the first of USA Today best-selling author Christine Pope's Djinn Wars series. My retelling of Beauty and the Beast (The Summer Garden) is also on offer, so I'm in great company. Click here to go to the promo and choose your favorite reading platform.

Having a hard time waiting for Beauty & the Beast?

It seems like 2017 is a long way away after you've seen the wonderful trailer for the Emma Watson, live-action Beauty and the Beast feature film. I feel your pain! While you're waiting, why not grab a copy of my retelling of the classic story, The Summer Garden.  It's free right now on Amazon.

Mercedes Lackey's take on Beauty and the Beast: The Fire Rose

The TBR pile gets taller and taller. I'm pretty sure at this point it's taller than I am but it's spread out all over the house, so I don't know for sure. I'm a big fan of Lackey's work. Not sure how I missed reading this. I'm not crazy about the cover, though.

The teaser trailer for Beauty and the Beast

Disney has just released the teaser trailer for their live-action Beauty and the Beast. And it looks lush.

Bite-sized Beauty and the Beast

My retelling of Beauty and the Beast, The Summer Garden, is free this week on Amazon. Because we all need a free fairy tale every once in a while.

Beauty and the Beast retold in Christine Pope's Wolf of Harrow Hall

"Beauty and the Beast" is one of the most beloved fairy tales ever told. Right now there are two different film versions being developed. Christophe Gans' gorgeous French language version is available on YouTube. And if you go on GoodReads looking for a retelling of the tale, you're directed to a list with 1006 results, one of them my own novelette The Summer Garden. (There are 2611 retellings of "Cinderella" so that's even more popular as source material.)

Christine Pope likes "Beauty and the Beast." She retold it in her novella Breath of Life, which kickstarted her Gaia Consortium Series. And now she's used the story as a basis for a lush, snow-bound love story called The Wolf of Harrow Hall. Part of her Tales of the Latter Kingdoms series--all stand-alone fairy tales--Wolf has a gorgeous cover by Ravven, and an original new mythos that explains the nature of the beast. Buy it now at Amazon and on other publishing platforms.

Dragon Rose by Christine Pope is FREE!

Isn't this a beautiful cover? It's by Ravven, who also designed the covers for my novelette Hunter's Kiss and the first of my Time Flood novels (see sidebar). Dragon Rose is one of the books in Christine Pope's series "Tales of the Latter Kingdoms," which are stand-alone retellings of various fairy tales. Dragon Rose is inspired by Beauty and the Beast, and it's a lovely version. You can find Dragon Rose here.

In praise of Kinuko Y. Craft

Artwork: © Kinuko. Y. Craft, All Rights Reserved,

  www.kycraft.com

The first piece of Kinuko Y. Craft's work I ever saw was this beautiful, strange illustration of a leopard woman drinking from a pool. Or at least that's what it seems to be to me. I wish I knew more. (The painting is called "The Transformation of Angarred" and I don't know anything about the story it's based on.) It immediately spoke to me, taking me to a place beyond reality and I wanted to write a story to match it. Craft calls herself a "storyteller," and it's true. Even if you don't know the story that she's given life in her art, A story suggets itself to you.

Kinuko Y. Craft's beautifully illustrated hardcover retelling of Beauty and the Beast (written by Mahlon F. Craft, Kinuko's husband, an artist/photographer) arrives from Harper Collins this July. You can pre-order it here and you should, because it looks exquisite. And while you're there, you should pick up a copy of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, their previous collaboration,  as well.On her site, you can buy signed posters she created for the Dallas Opera House. They're a bargain for their beauty and this one is going to be my birthday present to myself:

Artwork: © Kinuko. Y. Craft, All Rights Reserved,

  www.kycraft.com

Fairy Tale Retellings: Five Enchanted Roses

I really like "Beauty and the Beast" and I'm always up for new versions. (The gorgeous movie version by French director Christophe Gans is available on YouTube. You should check it out here.)
This is a book that's on my TBR list. Five different retellings of the classic story.

TBR: Jeannie Lin's classic steampunkfairy tale retelling 'The Warlord and the Nightingale"

I love fairy tales and love reading modern versions and re-imagined versions. I especially enjoy it when writers work with material that's not as well known. (I love "Beauty and the Beast" and "Cinderella," but they're not the only fairy tales out there, you know?)
Jeanie Lin writes beautifully and this lush story is set in the universe of her "Gunpowder Chronicles," steapunk tales set during the Opium Wars. It is a retelling of "The Emperor and the Nightingale," and you will enjoy it.

Learn more about Jeannie Lin here.

A Vampire a Day: Fevre Dream by George R. R. Martin

I first encountered George R. R. Martin as a fan of the original Beauty and the Beast, which he created. I found out he'd written a couple of novels and went in search of them. I really liked Armageddon Rag, but I REALLY liked Fevre Dream, his vampire novel. It's an obscure one that ended up on the B&N Reads list of "the Ten Best Vampire Novels No One Has Read"  (I've read one other book on the list, Suzy McKee C Charnas' Vampire Taspestry but haven't read the other eight which means I have the chance to discover eight (EIGHT!!!!) great new books.

Fevre Dream is a gothic novel with a capital G. Wikipedia, which has an entry on the book (of course they do--it's not a "thing" unless it's got a Wikipedia article) that likens the book's style to a mashup of Bram Stoker and Mark Twain. Martin worked out a complex backdrop for his vampires (the "red thirst" they experience, the Pale King who leads them) and it mostly takes place on an elegant and elaborate steam boat (the Fevre Dream of the title.)

This is a lush and decadent and nuanced novel and (in my opinion) leaves Anne Rice in the dust.

Durable Fairy Tales--Beauty and the Beast

I don't know when I first read Beauty and the Beast, but the first filmed version I saw was Jean Cocteau's dreamy, surreal version of the fairy tale. I remember the disembodied candelabra lighting the Beaast's home. And I remember thinking that the Beast was much more interesting than the bland man he transformed into.
Since then I've read a lot of variations on the theme, and seen a lot of the movies too--from Disney's rollicking musical version to Beastly, with Mary-Kate Olsen as the witch who curses pretty-boy Alex Pettyfer. 

Today, when I got my daily slew of newsletters offering free and almost free books for the kindle, I noticed one called The Beast of Bath, a Regency Fairytale. I thought it looked interesting and I started thinking about how many versions of the B&B I've read in the last few years, wtih their widely diverse settings. Christine Pope, for example, kicked off her popular Gaia Consortium series with a novella called Breath of Life, her version of the story.
Why is Beauty and the Beast so popular?
I think one of the reasons is that the heroine is really likable in any of the versions you read. Unlike her sisters, she isn't selfish and vain or greedy.
She is not a shallow person. One of the things I remember most about Robin McKinley's lovely version of the story (Beauty) is that she delights in the Beast's library, which has all the books ever written, as well as those that have yet to be written.  I thought that was a most wonderful thing the first time I read it and I still do.
But the Beauty is also someone who makes a moral choice. I'm not a fairy tale scholar, but I remember when I read the tale of Sir Gawain and the Loathly Lady" that it was a Beauty and the Beast story with a gender change. My favorite moment in the story comes when the Lady asks the Knight which he would prefer--being able to see her as the beauty she is at night, when it's just them, or during the day, when the court can see he didn't marry a "beast." And he tells her to choose for herself, thus breaking the spell. This story is one of the subplots of a truly godawful movie called Merlin and the Sword (Candice Bergen as Morgan le Fay, Rupert Everett as Lancelot and a young Liam Neeson playing a character called Grak), and Patrick Ryecart (currently in Poldark) as Gawain. Ryecart was terrific (you might have seen him in the BBC Romeo & Juliet), and I wish the movie as a whole had been even a little better because who doesn't like King Arthur movies?
But I digress.
I was trolling through Amazon.com looking for other Beauty and the Beast stories and I found a ton of tales that looked interesting. The one that intrigued me most of all was Depravity by M.J. Haag.
It's the first in a trilogy, and it's got a 4.8 rating. It sounds like it's got a darker edge to it and that works completely because at its heart, B&B is a psychologically complex tale. I can't wait to read it.

Interview with Christine Pope

Christine Pope is a novelist who defies categorization. She's equally at home writing contemporary romance and science fictionized fairy tales. She writes short stories. She blogs. She keeps up with Kindle boards. She is my hero! This year she's been especially prolific and if I didn't like her so much, I'd hate her. If you like well-plotted, character-heavy fiction with a romantic edge, you owe it to yourself to discover Christine's work, if you don't know it already.

Let's talk about the books.

Your new book, All Fall Down, is the first of your "Tales of the Latter Kingdoms." What are the "Latter Kingdoms" and what is the book about?

The "Latter Kingdoms" are a group of countries spread across one continent in a fantasy world that's more Renaissance than medieval in terms of technology, the arts, politics, fashion, and so forth. Since I plan for the series to be set in a variety of these kingdoms, I wanted the series title to reflect all of them. All Fall Down is mainly set in a kingdom named Seldd, a land that's rather backward compared to many of the other countries on the continent. It's about a young woman named Merys Thranion who has been trained as a physician, and how she's captured as a slave and brought to Seldd, at first to heal a nobleman's injured daughter. But she comes up against a far more difficult situation when the plague appears for the first time in hundreds of years. And behind her surface struggles is her growing affection for Lord Shaine, her master. Physicians in her Order are not supposed to form personal attachments, so poor Merys really has to go through the wringer on multiple levels in the book.

Did you originally intend to write a series? Will each story in the series be stand-alone or will there be "cross-pollination" of plots and characters?  Can you tell us a little bit about the second book in the series, Dragon Rose?

You know, I really didn't think about writing a series. I just started writing several different books set in this world, and then I sort of realized partway through that they were a series, although one connected by milieu and not any overarching quest or storyline. All the books in the series are standalones, although events in some books may be mentioned in passing in others. For example, the next book in the series, Dragon Rose, has a brief comment about the plague that dominates the storyline of All Fall Down. Dragon Rose takes place about five years later in a neighboring kingdom called Farendon. It's a very different book, somewhat inspired by the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale, but with an almost gothic tone.

Your book Blood Will Tell and your novella Breath of Life are both set in the Gaian Consortium world. What do you have planned for other books in that series?

I have two more books planned right now, but I'm sure there will be more than that. The first one is called The Gaia Gambit, and it's another planet-hopping romance/adventure story with an adversaries-to-lovers relationship at the center of it. That one is planned for a spring release, depending on what happens with my other books. The next book after that is called Marooned on Mandala, and it also has a Zhore hero (the same alien race we first meet in Breath of Life), although the heroine is very different. She's a Gaian ambassador who gets flung into a world of hurt when the ship she and the Zhore are on crash-lands on an uninhabited planet. I actually got the idea after a fan commented that she really wanted to see another book with a Zhore hero. Your wish is my command! 

Breath of Life is a lovely sci-fi take on the classic "Beauty and the Beast" fairy tale. Do you have any plans to science fictionize other fairy tales?

See my comments on Dragon Rose. I really don't have any plans to do more science fiction fairy tales, although I am going to do some set in the "Latter Kingdoms" world. I have some ideas jotted down for a Red Riding Hood–inspired book called The Wolf of Harrow Hall.

You've published a couple of books this year. Anything else coming out this year? What's in the queue for next year?

Dragon Rose is slated for release in December. It's finished and has gone through its first edit, and I'll be sending it out to beta readers in October. For 2013 I'm planning on releasing The Gaia Gambit, the next Gaian Consortium book; Desert Hearts, a sequel to my paranormal UFO romance Bad Vibrations and the second book in the Sedona trilogy; Binding Spell, another "Latter Kingdoms" book; and possibly Marooned on Mandala and (I hope) Angel Fire, which will complete the Sedona trilogy. In addition to all that, I'll start getting the rights back to my small press–published books in 2013, so I'll be editing and updating them as needed and then releasing them with new covers.

Seriously? The reboot of Beauty and the Beast

You know, I like to look at pretty people as much as the next person, but this new art for the CW's 2012 reboot of the 1980s series Beauty and the Beast (starring Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman) makes it look like the series has somehow missed the point. On IMDB there's already a thread that asks, "Is Vincent seriously just a guy with a scar on his face? Because that's kind of lame."
Kind of?
The CW's Vincent (his surname is "Koslow," a tribute to the original creator of the series, Ron Koslow, does have the Twilight golden eye thing going on.  Jay Ryan, a Kiwi actor who honed his craft with roles in Young Hercules and Xena, is a fine-looking guy who is probably best known in the US for doing three episodes of the short-lived series Terra Nova.
Here's a link to an interview Ryan and Kristin Kreuk (in the Linda Hamilton part) did at the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con to promote their new show. In the interview they explain how their show's concept has changed from the 80s show--the Beast is a product of a military experiment, for example, and Kristen's character is now an NYPD detective rather than a DA. Although they hadn't yet seen any of the episode scripts--just the pilot--both insisted that the shows would be a mix of procedural and action and romance and fairy tale elements.