Fairy Tales Reimagined

Okay, so I've seen quite a few fairy tale stories floating around out there. I'll admit that I've kind of held them at bay, because I'm afraid I'll get sucked right in and never be able to get out! After all, I devoured the first season and a half Once Upon A Time, and yeah. Wasted a lot of hours there!

Not that I actually think enjoying good books, movies, or TV shows is a waste, but you know. So today, I want to talk fairy tales. Have you read any reimaginings?

Here are a couple I'm starting with (already loaded on the Kindle! Yay!):

A BEAUTY SO BEASTLY by RaShelle Workman.

About: For your vanity, your cruelty, and your cold unfeeling heart, a curse I leave upon you . . .”

What happens if the beauty is also the beast?

The stunning Beatrice Cavanaugh is considered American royalty. She has everything except the ability to love. Cursed on her eighteenth birthday, she becomes more beastly than ever, having a newfound craving for raw meat, and an undeniable yearning for the night. Bitterness is her only companion.

After accusing a maid of stealing, a disgustingly kind and exquisitely handsome guy named Adam shows up asking Beatrice to drop the charges against his mother.

Infuriated by his goodness, Beatrice vows to break him. Destroy him. Make him hurt the way she hurts. So she agrees. On one condition: Adam must take his mother’s place as a servant in the mansion.

Because Beatrice won’t stop until he’s more beastly than she is.

Buy | RaShelle's website

RaShelle said this about where she got the inspiration for A BEAUTY SO BEASTLY: "My inspiration came from the fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast. I’ve always loved that story but I thought it would be fun to have the beauty also be the beast. And A Beauty So Beastly was born. =)"

RaShelle writes a lot of fairy tale retellings, so be sure to check out her other work!

I'm also looking forward to DOROTHY MUST DIE by Danielle Paige. I mean, the title is enough to peak anyone's interest (and is this technically a fairy tale? It's definitely a retelling, so I'm going to go with it), but here's what the book is about.

I didn’t ask for any of this. I didn’t ask to be some kind of hero. But when your whole life gets swept up by a tornado—taking you with it—you have no choice but to go along, you know?

Sure, I’ve read the books. I’ve seen the movies. I know the song about the rainbow and the happy little blue birds. But I never expected Oz to look like this. To be a place where Good Witches can’t be trusted, Wicked
Witches may just be the good guys, and winged monkeys can be executed for acts of rebellion. There’s still the yellow brick road, though—but even that’s crumbling.

What happened? Dorothy. They say she found a way to come back to Oz. They say she seized power and the power went to her head. And now no one is safe.

My name is Amy Gumm—and I’m the other girl from Kansas. I’ve been recruited by the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked. I’ve been trained to fight. And I have a mission:

Remove the Tin Woodman’s heart.

Steal the Scarecrow’s brain.

Take the Lion’s courage.

Then and only then—Dorothy must die!

And a friend of mine just sold her Alice in Wonderland retelling too! Be sure to check out her announcement on Facebook and say congratulations!

What fairy tale retellings have you read?? What are you excited for?

Summer Reading Club!

Okay, so we here at the League write books. As authors, we're also rabid readers, and we thought it would be fun to have a Summer Reading Club here at the League! So every Friday this month, we'll be highlighting and recommending amazing speculative fiction novels as part of our Club.

Each week will have a different theme, and we thought the best way to start would be to spotlight the novels we loved as teens.

We hope you'll add these titles to your list of books to read if you haven't already, and we'd love to hear your thoughts on what you loved as a teen in the comments!

Lissa Price's Novel of the Month: The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
"This enchanted tale captured my imagination and immersed me in another world."

Lenore Appelhans's Recommended Read: Beauty by Sheri Tepper
"Mixing fairy tales with time travel dystopia, Beauty enthralled me as a young teen and introduced me to genre-bending sci-fi."

Susanne Winnacker's Top Pick: Watchers by Dean Koontz
"As a teen, I devoured everything Koontz had written, and this one featured a super intelligent, genetically engineered dog, which made me love it even more."

Beth Revis's Must-Read: Many Waters by Madeleine L'Engle
"Most people prefer L'Engle's first in the Time Travel Quartet, A Wrinkle in Time, but I always loved Many Waters. It broke my heart while giving me hope at the same time."

Mindy McGinnis's Pick of the Week: Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O'Brien
"A teen girl surviving alone in a post-nuclear world? Yes, please."

Peggy Eddleman's Feature Title: The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
"I first read this probably when I was the same age as Will Stanton-- eleven. I was completely drawn in by the prophesied hero who had to save everyone while he was just a kid. It was one of those books that made me think that being a kid didn't mean I couldn't do great things."

Lydia Kang's Most Memorable Read: Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander
"I loved that world so much, and seeing Princess Eilonwy and Taran grow so much throughout the series was one of the best parts."

Bethany Hagens Obsession: Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden
"There was something really thrilling about ordinary teens turning into guerrilla fighters, and I loved that it was set in Australia."

What's on your summer reading list??

Space: The Final Frontier

Okay, so that sounds a little Star Trekky, I know. I am a big fan of Star Trek, especially the TV series, The Next Generation. (Most of the others, you know, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and/or Enterprise, I never did get as into.)

Maybe it was Captain Picard that really spoke to me, or how you can watch any episode in any order and understand the story, but I enjoyed Star Trek: The Next Generation. I know the graphics, and technologies, and special effects aren't as grandiose as today's standards (and the films coming out now!), but it was this series that first sparked my fascination with space travel.

Now, I have yet to pen a space travel novel, but I absolutely love novels set in space. There's something equally exciting and perplexing about being trapped in space. Yes, I view space as a place where I'd be trapped. There's no air out there!

Films like Gravity make me glad I'm on earth, watching as someone else endures the brutalities of extreme temperature and lack of oxygen. I've also enjoyed novels like Across the Universe by Beth Revis, These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner, Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan, and others.

It seems as though novels set in space are a bit of a trend right now, a "hot thing." I really do think it's one of the final frontiers, where the possibilities of new worlds, new species, new ideas, is endless. Maybe that's what draws authors and readers to write and read novels set in space.

How do you feel about space? Novels set in space? Space travel? 

An Iron Rod To The Head Can Really Change Your Perspective

I'm fascinated by the human brain. Deeply, deeply fascinated. Our understanding of the rest of our bodies is pretty thorough, but the organ that makes us US, that commands our speech and movement, our personalities and intelligence we're still drawing a pretty big blank on. Yes, we're learning. We're mapping our brains and using the technology at our fingertips to make strides, but one of the larger steps toward knowing more about our brains came in 1848.

Phineas Gage was a railroad worker whose job involved setting blasts to make way through rock for the new lines. He used a tamping iron - a metal rod three feet long - to tamp charges down before igniting them. On September 13, 1848 someone messed up. A hole had been bored into the rock, the powder had gone in, and (Gage thought) so had the sand that his tamping iron packs. But the sand wasn't there, and when Gage struck the gunpowder it ignited, sending his tamping iron through his skull. It entered below his left eye socket and exited through the top of his head.

Yep, that's gross.

If you want to see a digital reconstruction of the accident (skull only, no gore) take a look at this video from the New England Journal of Medicine. I personally love that they added Gage's jaw dropping open in shock as the tamping iron explodes his eye socket.

Gage is famous not because he had a tamping iron blown through his head. He's famous because he lived even though part of his frontal lobe exited along with the tamping iron. Gage not only lived, but was walking and speaking right after the accident. His workmen carted him to the town doctor, to whom he supposedly said, "Here's work enough for you, doctor."

Yes, he even had a sense of humor about it all.

But, not for long. Though Gage lived through the accident, his personality showed damage long after the physical healing was finished. Gage had been a hard worker, an intelligent foreman and a pleasant person. Post-accident Gage was a shadow of his former self. The doctor who treated him initially, Dr. John Martin, followed Gage's progress with interest and documented the personality change:

The equilibrium or balance, so to speak, between his intellectual faculties and animal propensities, seems to have been destroyed. He is fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest profanity (which was not previously his custom), manifesting but little deference for his fellows, impatient of restraint or advice when it conflicts with his desires, at times pertinaciously obstinate, yet capricious and vacillating, devising many plans of future operations, which are no sooner arranged than they are abandoned in turn for others appearing more feasible. A child in his intellectual capacity and manifestations, he has the animal passions of a strong man. Previous to his injury, although untrained in the schools, he possessed a well-balanced mind, and was looked upon by those who knew him as a shrewd, smart businessman, very energetic and persistent in executing all his plans of operation. In this regard his mind was radically changed, so decidedly that his friends and acquaintances said he was 'no longer Gage.'

While Phineas' accident was life-changing in a bad way, it led to tremendous gains in the emerging science of neurology. Scientists were just beginning to understand that different areas of the brain served different purposes, and while they didn't quite grasp how this worked (enjoy this amusing early phrenology chart), Gage's trauma taught them that the frontal cortex was heavily involved in personality and social reasoning.

Gage died during an epileptic fit thirteen years after the tamping rod accident. His skull and tamping iron are in the Harvard University School of Medicine, if you want to go see them.

Gage's story is both sad and amazing, one that's always captured my attention. That a iron rod can pass through the human brain and that brain continue to function might sound like fiction, but it's not.

It's just science.

Independence Day!

The Fourth of July is one of my all-time favorite holidays. I'm patriotic, and there's something nostalgic about celebrating your heritage, spending time with family and friends, and remembering the fight for freedom. I hope everyone has an amazing holiday weekend here in the US, and everyone who isn't can find time to enjoy themselves too!

Today, we're talking aliens and freedom. Specifically the movie Independence Day. I love this movie -- we own it on VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray -- because it came out 17 years ago when my husband and I were first dating. I think going to see it in the theater was one of our first handful of dates. So I have memories there, all entwined with the movie.

Second, and this needs no explanation, Will Smith. I mean, come on. As a teenage fan of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, anything with Will Smith was going to be viewed. (I may or may not still have this attitude.)

 I also really like Jeff Goldblum, and I thought he added a layer of comedy to what could've been a scary, alien movie. Okay, it was sort of a scary, alien movie. But the cast of characters from Randy Quaid to Bill Pullman, really pulled off a great movie, I think.

And last year, Twentieth Century Fox announced that they're making a sequel. I think that may be the longest time ever between sequels, but don't quote me on that! The second movie won't come out until next Independence Day (2015), and it won't have Will Smith in it, but still. I think I'll be seeing it.

With the recent emergence of aliens in YA fiction (I'm thinking specifically of The Fifth Wave by Rick Yancey), I think it's a great time to be in the extraterrestrial business. So yay! More alien lifeforms!

What did you think of Independence Day? Do you think you'll see the sequel? 

Happy Release Day to Defector by Susanne Winnacker!

DEFECTOR is the sequel to IMPOSTOR (our League review here), so slight spoilers for book one ahead. Ready? Okay!

As you no doubt recall from IMPOSTOR, Tessa is a Variant who lives and works with a special unit of the FBI known as the FEA (Forces with Extraordinary Abilities). Her power is shape-shifting, and like Mystique of the X-Men, Tessa can take on any identity. In IMPOSTOR, she impersonated a murder victim for a special mission. In DEFECTOR, she goes on her second mission, impersonating a senator who is being targeted by Abel's Army, a radical group of Variants.

The mission goes anything but smoothly and Tessa ends up discovering several shocking truths about herself and about her boyfriend Alec. This truths are such game-changers that Tessa goes on the road with Devon (brother of the dead girl she played in book one) on a rogue fact-finding mission. But with both Abel's Army and the FEA after her, Tessa has to be smarter and more resourceful than ever before.

A Personal Journey

In book one, Tessa struggled to define her place within FEA, but her character arc in book two is about self-discovery, coming to terms with her origins, and learning to make decisions for herself. It's a fascinating character study that explores how our alliances shape us, but how we ultimately control our own destiny.

Major Reveals

Who can you trust when everyone lies to you? Tessa's eyes are opened via several huge plot twists that put everything she thought she knew into question. Tessa's willingness to give up everything to find out the truth drives the action and sets up some stellar confrontation scenes (I especially loved the underground bar).

Read Now!

Fortunately, you don't have to wait to defect with Tessa. DEFECTOR is available now at all major retailers.

Amazon
Barnes and Noble
IndieBound
Book Depository

An Interview with WINGS Author Elizabeth Richards

Today it is my very great pleasure to post an interview with our very own Elizabeth Richards as the third book in the Black City trilogy is released: Wings! The first book, Black City, made my heart beat along with Ash's, and I can't wait to grab my copy of Wings. You can find out more about Elizabeth from her Facebook and Twitter (and here!) and more about her book on GoodReads.

We can read all about your life from your bio in the jacket flap of your book. So, what's a completely random fact about you that most people don't know?

I have a heart-shaped birth mark on my left foot! It’s the only way my parents could tell me and my twin-sister apart when we were newborns.

What's the most surprising thing you've learned since becoming a writer?

That you spend very little of your working day actually writing! I was stunned when I first entered the business and realized that the majority of my time would be taken up with marketing and publicity, especially in my debut year. I’ve managed to find a better balance now, and put writing ahead of everything else, even though it’s SO tempting to constantly pop onto Twitter…

Challenge time! Can you describe your book series in just one sentence?

Dystopian ‘Romeo and Juliet’ with vampires, explosions and kissing!

It's the inevitable question: what inspired the Black City books?

A number of things inspired the series. Initially it was Ash—his character came to me fully-formed one evening, when I was watching a movie, and I became enthralled by the idea of this drug-dealing, supernatural boy who gets a heartbeat when he meets his true love. It was also around the time of the 20^th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down, and so that was on the news a lot, and I kept wondering what it would be like to live in a city divided by a wall, and how terrible it would be if you were stuck on the wrong side of the wall, away from your family…especially if the side you were on happened to be filled with people that wanted to kill you. So that became the inspiration for the Boundary Wall. And the setting of Black City is inspired by Victorian London, with the ash-choked skies and gothic architecture.  

One of the things I loved about your first book, Black City, is that while it’s a fictional world, there seems to be some influence from our own history—especially themes of prejudice that reminded me of World War II and the Holocaust, as well as apartheid and civil rights movements. Can you tell us more about how you brought the real past into your fictional world, and why you explored those themes?

During the initial planning stages of Black City, I wondered what the world would be like if supernatural creatures actually lived among us. How would the humans react? Would they embrace the Darklings or be frightened of our differences? Unfortunately I didn’t have to look far back in our history to get a sense of how things could be. It didn’t seem far-fetched that the Darklings would be herded into ghettos and denied their civil rights, nor did it feel unbelievable that the Sentry government would commit genocide or kill anyone who fraternized with a Darkling, in order to create their perfect vision of ‘One Faith, One Race, One Nation under His Mighty’. And so that formed the basis of the series.

An image that will stay with me forever is when Ash’s heart starts to beat after he meets Natalie. The books are obviously so much more than a love story, but the love story part of the novels just sings. Could you discuss this part of the story more? How did you develop their love?

I’m a sucker for ‘love-at-first-sight’, however I didn’t want their romance to be a stereotypical ‘insta-love’ story. In the world of Black City, when a Darkling meets their Blood Mate, their heart activates and this is what happens when Ash first meets Natalie. However, all is not what it seems, when they learn [SPOILER] that Natalie has a stolen heart and Ash’s Blood Mate is actually another girl [SPOILER OVER]. For me, that was a much more interesting story to tell, because love isn’t easy—it’s hard fought for and, more to the point, it’s a choice. They choose to stay together because they want to, not because they have to, due to some mystical connection. And even when the fates keep trying to pull them apart, even when things get tough, they find each other. That, for me, is true love and why so many of my readers connect with their romance.  

Let’s talk Purian Rose. How did you develop such a villain? In Wings, you talk more about his past—did you always know that past, or was it something you developed as you started the third book?

I knew some of his past—at least, the two big things—but I’m not one to obsessively plot things out before I start writing (shhh, don’t tell my editor!); I like to be surprised because if I’m surprised then I hope the reader will be too. I actually found myself caring for him quite deeply, which I wasn’t expecting.   

If your reader could only take away one emotion, theme, or idea from the last book of the trilogy, Wings, what would you want it to be?

Forgiveness. That’s the key message in the book. “It’s easy to hate; the true tests of our hearts is to forgive.”

Don't forget to enter our giveaway!

a Rafflecopter giveaway