Re_Mused Writers

 I'd heard there was a curse put on this community by an evil fairy, and that all the members were in a deep enchanted sleep. I fear I may be the only mortal who has survived this curse. I will be sitting at the South Street Seaport every mid day when the sun is highest in the sky. If anyone is out there, I can provide food, shelter, security. If there's anybody out there ... you are not alone.

(cross posted from my LJ)

I wanted to remind everyone that Re_Mused members Sarah Beth Durst and I will be speaking on the fairy tales/"mythic buzz" panel at the WFC this weekend.  Our co-panelists are Tim Powers, Margo Lanagan, and fellow debutante Mark Ferrari.  If you're in the neighborhood, pop by and see us!

From the program:

There's an Archetype in My Soup! Much fantasy deliberately employs elements of fairy-tale and myth, often after much scholarly research. But there's still the old argument that if you have to learn an archetype, it isn't one, that these patterns are universal in human storytelling. What is the mythic "buzz" we all know when we see it, even when we have difficulty defining it?

Saturday 1 pm City Center A

</a></b></a>e_underwood also has a great re-cap (pre-cap?) of the con on her LJ today .

Hope to see other Re_Mused folks there!

I should know the answer to this, but I don't.

What's the title (or what are the titles) for the story where the good sister has diamonds and roses dropping from her mouth every time she speaks, and the bad sister has frogs and snakes?

For the life of me, I cannot remember what story that is.

In case anyone's interested, I just posted about another obscure fairy tale on my blog.  This time, it's The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs...

I've begun teaching my class on fairy-tale retellings, and since people expressed an interest back when I last talked about this, I'll post my syllabus when I've made my final decisions about the short stories we'll be reading in the second half of the semester.

But before then, I need a recommendation. We're watching movies on Fridays, and while I have most of those picked out, I need one more. We started with Disney's Sleeping Beauty and will be moving on to Ever After with Drew Barrymore starting next week; later we'll be watching Into the Woods, Shrek, and The Brothers Grimm. Since those latter films are all about pastiche, I'd like one more that retells a single fairy tale, but I'm not sure what to go with. I'd like to stay away from Disney (since they're so familiar to begin with, and I've used one already), but I'm having a hard time thinking of other single-tale films. Pastiche really seems to be a more popular mode lately.

Any suggestions?

I'd like to remind the group (and our readers) that our very own Sarah Beth Durst's debut novel, Into the Wild, hit shelves today!

My copy arrived today, along with melissa_writing's also very new release, Wicked Lovely!

Now... which shall I read first?

As some of you may recall, every once in a while I do a post on my blog about obscure fairy tales that I learned about while doing research for my forthcoming novel, INTO THE WILD.  Well, this week, in honor of the upcoming publication of INTO THE WILD (it's coming out on Thursday!!!), I decided to talk about a very non-obscure fairy tale: Snow White.  If interested, click here.

So, what do you guys think of Snow White?

This month's story--or, in this case, "poem"--on my web site is "Advice," which touches on the whole business of fairy tales and their rules ...

When getting married in Faery, elope.
Issue no invitations,
Hold no balls.
Better still, live together
For a time,
So no one will notice when
You sneak the act by.
No one to take offense
Or cast a curse ...

I am working on a children's picture book as a personal project (publication goal, but I am really at the beginning), that is a retelling of a 13th century story. The original story ends with love lost and (to be honest) fatality (via a duel). I would like to stick to the original story, retold for picture book format, however I am wondering how the ending will be taken? It's an ancient, culturally-based tale, with ties to real history, and I think it could be done really well (enter blood/sweat/tears), and has a lot of merit, but I'm not sure how a sad ending of this type would be taken amongst kids, parents, or possible publishers? I would have loved it as a child, but I have been a nonfiction junky all along.

Any input would be greatly appreciated. :)

There's an article in TIME on how fractured fairy tales are bigger business than traditional retellings of classic tales:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1619573,00.html

I had meant to post about this after reading an op-ed piece in FOREWORD magazine, by a children's book editor complaing of not being able to find a traditional version instead of a fractured retelling of certain fairy tales to buy for her kids, but it wasn't online and I can't find where I put the issue...

A quote from the TIME piece:
Someday the kids will read the original tale and wonder why the stupid straw-house pig doesn't just hop onto the next bookshelf. Likewise, Shrek reimagines Puss in Boots as a Latin tomcat--but what kid today even reads Puss in Boots in the original?

This is the new world of fairy tales: parodied, ironized, meta-fictionalized, politically adjusted and pop-culture saturated. (Yes, the original stories are still out there, but they don't have the same marketing force behind them: the Happy Meals, action figures, books, games and other ancillary-revenue projects.)