![]() ![]() ![]() It’s puzzle-solving, often of the emotional/mental kind - not a clean intellectual game, but a bloody one that leaves me sleepless. How could the maiden in “Rumpelstiltskin” live happily ever after with a monarch who had threatened to kill her ( Spinners) how did Snow White survive in that glass coffin ( Dark Shimmer)? I try to make coherence of improbabilities by looking for medical and/or psychological reasons that might account for them. Who saved him? (This was the impetus for my novel Sirena.) Many old tales can be summarized by a series of seemingly disconnected and improbable events. Another example: in Homer’s Iliad, a soldier left on an island to die of a lethal serpent bite is found alive ten years later. What?! How’d she get that chance? Why didn’t the witch simply turn her into chicken powder? Unless, of course, the witch was an accomplice in her own demise (see my novel The Magic Circle). For example, Gretel burns up the witch in the oven. What draws me in is a narrative black hole - one I not only can’t escape but plunge into with abandon if the light won’t come to me, I go to it. They challenge me: how do I interest readers in a story they already know? ![]() Their plots grip me so hard I can barely breathe. They have stood the test of time, and I want to harness that power. I often write novels based on fairy tales, folktales, myths, and religious stories. ![]()
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