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rted real case that is speculated to have inspired madame de villeneuve to write the fairy tale which makes it all the odder that lacombe dislikes it and antonietta is one of the couple s hairy children according to lacombe antonietta s portrait made him want a different beauty beast story that was based on the true story of the gonsalvus family particularly their youngest child that had been gifted as a circus animal to powerful italian nobles he endeavoured to do art for a story based on her to do her suffering justice he claims grandly not merely another picture book regurgitating villeneuve or beaumont and he ended up creating a collage built over the beaumont version without knowing it i m sure with a heavy aesthetic loan from disney which has a troubling interpretation of the curse and crowned with undeniable ableism that s going to be a stain on his reputation and roumiguière s marquise surely you exaggerate and it can t be that terrible you ll exclaim what could be so bad as to make you call a respectable artist and his scriptwriter ableist and borderline eugenicist continue reading author interview katie hanna 20 wednesday may 2026 posted by marquise in the fairy whisperers 12 comments tags author interview folkloric fantasy historical fantasy westerns welcome to conversations with fairy whisperers katie it s exciting to have you as our guest today tell us about yourself how did you become a writer it s lovely to be here marquise thank you so much for having me a little bit about myself i was a classic homeschooled nerd who studied history in college and graduate school with the original intention of becoming a professor and researcher along the way though i became fascinated with the idea of taking the rich and complex historical stories i was learning about world war ii the fall of the hapsburg empire you name it and turning them into fiction something i had never attempted before by the end of my master s degree it became increasingly clear that i had no passion for academic writing and a lot of passion for the historical fiction i was busy hammering out on school vacations i made the executive decision to pursue a career as a novelist instead of a phd and i couldn t be happier with how that choice has turned out the first story of yours i read was a retelling of rapunzel included in an anthology of reimagined grimm tales which for me was one of the outstanding stories there what fascinates you about fairy tales and how did you begin writing retellings of them great question especially now that you know about my origins in the historical fiction genre and thank you for your praise of my rapunzel retelling i m flattered so fairy tales were really my main gateway to the concept of fantasy i e magic in storytelling as a child and teenager with the exception of the hobbit and the chronicles of narnia i read very little of what could be considered actual fantasy and didn t watch any fantasy films or fantasy tv shows either i had no interest in lord of the rings for example but i adored the andrew lang fairy tale collections for their old fashioned victorian language and gorgeous woodcut style illustrations ever the history nerd me in addition even before my perusal of the andrew lang books my brother and i had this huge chunky four hundred page anthology called an illustrated treasury of fairy and folk tales by james riordan it was incredibly violent even by the standards of older folktales i remember one story from central asia which literally apologies for the gore depicted the villainess skinning the heroine alive so she could wear her beautiful face à la nicolas cage in face off but the book was lavishly illustrated colorfully written highly diverse encompassing everything from armenian to aztec to african traditions and provided ample food for the imagination it definitely did its job in sparking my lifelong interest in fairy and folk tales i also think it gave my eventual works of fantasy an idiosyncratic twist inspired by the ofttimes strange and obscure forms of magic pervading these stories as for how i became interested in retellings specifically that would be the annual rooglewood press fairy tale retelling contests back in the 2010s sadly this once proud cultural institution is no more but at the time it was a big deal in my corner of the internet it was an especially big deal when my friend rachel kovaciny you know her as the author of a historical beauty and the beast retelling my rock and my refuge won the 2016 contest and had her sleeping beauty story published in the rooglewood anthology inspired by her success i entered the 2017 contest with a snow white retelling which was ahh not very good but i had a wonderful time and formed a close knit group of author friends who have been a blessing to me ever since do you have a favourite fairy tale what aspects of it appeal to you personally and why yes the boy who could not shudder from the brothers grimm growing up my siblings and i adored this story for its unapologetic grotesquerie you shall go right straight back into your coffin and now i will strangle you were perpetually quoted around our house alas my poor parents but as an adult i continue to be drawn to this tale for its unexpectedly inclusive celebration of a hero who is too different to fit into normal society but triumphs over the horrors that beset him by virtue of the same traits which once drew mockery as someone who always struggled with understanding social norms and often felt like the odd one out i find this story comforting i m also partial to one of the tales i read in riordan s illustrated treasury of fairy and folk tales called lord of the winds this folktale comes from the nenet people of siberia and follows the fairly standard pattern of a young girl who sets out to seek some god or monster with the intention of becoming his wife in lord of the winds she marries the god of winter to save her people from a terrible snowstorm child me thought this was very romantic and i still think it has beautiful imagery and themes of sacrifice plus i love winter survival stories cough my new book wild hunt cough interesting i would love to see you retell that folktale one day in your opinion what makes a retelling stand out what do you consider the joys and challenges of writing in this specific subgenre so this question is a complex one because to my mind it has several layers when i m reading good retellings stand out to me by how thoroughly they can reinvent the story in the context of their own story world yet still keep the original tale recognizable as a coherent whole i m not necessarily wedded to any single character or message or theme of the original but i want to be able to look at the whole retelling and go yes i still recognized x tale but it felt completely natural and well integrated into this new world i read an amazing sleeping beauty retelling a short story in the 2016 rooglewood collection called out of the tomb by ashley stangl it was science fiction about a female tomb raider who accidentally wakes a sleeping prince from some kind of stasis pod and has a whole redemption arc it perfectly illustrated for me what a great retelling should be recognizable cohesive but still transformed and fresh and new when i m writing on the other hand well the truth is i don t write strict fairy tale retellings anymore i was only able to pull it off once that rapunzel story you liked and it was excruciatingly difficult to force my brain into that mold i ve realized i m just not good at creating a story that fits a prearranged pattern and is trying to imitate something else closely enough to be clearly recognizable instead i write stories that i consider inspired by fairy tales and folktales for example my latest novel wild hunt is partly inspired by hans christian andersen s the snow queen many aspects of the plot and characters are wildly different from anything that appears in the snow queen such as the titular wild hunt but there is still a villainous goddess queen figure with supernatural snow and ice powers who wants to steal the young male hero away from the girl that loves him my heroine goes on an epic journey to find the boy and restore him to himself giving him back his heart and soul and that s very snow queen coded in your opinion what fairy tale is the most complicated to reinvent and why probably cinderella in fact i once wrote a blog post about what i dubbed the cinderella problem how to give cinderella greater agency when the original fairy tale relies on her having very little she s stuck in her abusive family s household and her happy ending is no longer being stuck in her family s house while escaping abuse is certainly a common theme in fairy tales most fairy tale protagonists have a greater degree of mobility often voluntarily leaving home to seek their fortunes elsewhere by contrast cinderella s story is so heavily associated with being trapped that even the 2015 disney live action film couldn t seem to think beyond that scenario instead coming up with frankly nonsensical reasons why their mature adult cinderella still needed to be trapped by her stepmother hence the cinderella problem shout out to rook di goo by jenni sauer for brilliantly solving this problem however her cinderella is a jaded ex soldier on the run from an evil government and that s just the beginning after your short stories you ve embarked in a new writing endeavour entitled the nightmare saga a series with three installments so far that could be described as embracing folkloric fantasy historical fantasy and weird western how did you come across the idea for these books and what can you tell us about its creative process that s a fantastic description of my books thank you marquise folkloric fantasy historical fantasy and weird western so there are a couple of layers to your question of how the series originated i can say first of all that i started with the idea for book one water horse rather than the idea for a whole series although plans for a series blossomed fairly quickly from that point the concept for water horse came to me in a burst of inspiration as i finished reading the scorpio races by maggie stiefvater in the summer of 2017 scorpio races is a beautiful lyrically written ya novel about mysterious water horses who emerge from the ocean to be caught and tamed and ridden in a ritual horse race this book like so much of stiefvater s work is based on traditional celtic legends but it was my first time being introduced to this particular legend and it ignited in my brain like wildfire i remember lying on the rug in my parents living room on an incredibly hot summer day and going well obviously the logical thing to do is to write a western novel about these magic horses at this point i already knew i wanted to write about immigrants and immigrant cultures more on that in a minute so from there it was a natural step to envisioning an entire series about different forms of transplanted magic in the wild west from shapeshifting irish horses to chinese dragons to germanic ghost armies and so on writing each book involves researching the folklore of a particular culture zeroing in on a monster or other mythological creature i want to highlight and brainstorming ways to both make it my own and make it fit into the existing world of my story i try to be faithful to the spirit of these legends as i understand them but i also do a certain amount of modifying in water horse for example the carnivorous magic horses are shown to eat the heart and liver of their victims and leave the rest of the corpse untouched in case you can t tell that s not in the original i made that up mainly because i wanted an easy way to differentiate them from normal predators in the eyes of the cowboys who would be tracking them you are a historian by profession and that means expecting higher standards for stories set in the past how do you balance the need for historical accuracy with fantasy worldbuilding in your books i research until i m tired of it and then deflect all other quibbles with there was a dragon on the cover kidding sort of my philosophy for these books is they need to be historically plausible rather than historically accurate since we are dealing with events that fundamentally did not happen the infusion of magic and magical creatures into the american west but at the same time i very much want the readers to feel the story could have happened and you re absolutely right i have a master s degree in history and i want to honor that existing history as much as possible so i put a lot of effort into getting the real world details right according to the real historical environment of the west like the cantonese speaking organized crime syndicates in black dragon which were indeed a powerful force in western cities similarly in wild hunt when esther speaks about her people the volga german mennonites fleeing from place to place to avoid war and violence until they finally settled in nebraska she is referring to the real historical fact that the volga germans were fleeing military conscription in imperial russia and that s why they came to america meanwhile rhoda ann is able to study at the university of nebraska because women were beginning to break into higher education during this time period early 1900s the character jimmy shanahan is a muckraking reporter of the type who commonly exposed abuses and attacked corrupt institutions during the progressive era and so on ultimately however there is still a dragon on the cover so if readers are looking for the strictest possible standards for historical accuracy in all things they should probably look elsewhere than the nightmare saga i think i m going to borrow your dragon on the cover expression myself it s similar to the counterargument we had in the asoiaf fandom about fantasy vs historicity and speaking of historical periods the american west or rather fiction set in the wild west is how i came to learn about the existence of the us as a yet unschooled small child from reading my father s westerns one of his favourite genres i imagine my experience isn t unusual as you can easily find non american fans of the us west and film book westerns in asia and also in europe as an american what attracted you to the wild west definitely the sense of adventure the sense that the wild west was a place where anything could happen even if that was never completely true in real life as ben wyatt from parks and rec would say it s about the mystique interestingly the first western story i fell in love with was not a classic cowboy western at all it was the little house on the prairie series by laura ingalls wilder often stereotyped as very girly very domestic very bildungsroman set in the victorian era right and yet because the story took place in the west and the author was very attuned to that western cultural mystique there was a relentless undercurrent of adven...