A Retelling

Hello all!

You might remember several years back I participated in Rooglewood Press' fairy tale retelling. The one I did was Beauty and the Beast, and then I didn't do it for a few years.

This year though, is their last year for the contest, so I decided to take part.

The story is Snow White.

Quite frankly, I wasn't thrilled. Snow White is about my least favorite fairy tale as far as Disney Princess movies are concerned.

But I was determined to at least try for this contest so I set about reading wiki pages on all the variations of Snow White, and let me tell ya they ranged from creepy to just flat out weird.

And still no story idea occurred. So I went to Pinterest for inspiration and searched things like Snow White retelling, futuristic snow white ...anything that turned up results besides this

So, finally I decided I was gonna do a futuristic snow white. Not a dystopia, but a futuristic, like gadgets and technology on steroids. 

But, I can't read that style of stuff, nor can I write it, so I never fell in love with or started work on it. 

Maybe I might try to go back to it later. 

Maybe. 

So I consulted Pinterest again. And you know those tumblr posts that someone says "someone write that story"? I found one of those. And inspiration struck. I can't reveal which post it was because it has some terrible spoilers, but soon darling, soon. 

So I started this new story, and the wonderful Skye has been reading it, and I think I'm about half done with the first draft. 

I'm in love with it. 

There are several characters. 

The main one being Zaig. 

He's some kind of cross between these two pictures. Twenty five years old, with a ever developing back story, and currently serving as my huntsman character although I've posed him as an assassin. Funny thing is, I don't think he actually smokes. 

Next is my evil Queen character, Queen Minoa. 

She's regal, frightening, demanding. Just all around very queen-like. Her combination of terror instilling attitudes and incredible good looks has Zaig quite entranced. 

And of course the Snow White character. 

Her name is not Snow or White. 

It's Ailda. 

There was some sort of method to her name. Alba is white in Latin, so I originally started with that, and then about two pages in it morphed to Ailda, because it sounded more feminine, and that's how it happened. 

Ailda is sweet, vulnerable, innocent. What a good princess should be. She's rather successful at holding Zaig's attention as well. 

Besides these, of course I have seven dwarf characters, who aren't actually dwarves at all, they're loggers, and full sized. They're rather fun, as they came from different places so I can play with their accents and superstitions as we go along. 

Making Zaig an assassin has brought in a host of fun weapons to talk about, and thank goodness for a word count limit or I'd probably talk about them for pages. 

Darn it anyway.