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!