On Fairy Tales - by Gillian Polack

Last month I gave a speech on fairy tales to the Australian Fairy Tale Society. This is not that speech. Be very thankful! This is, however, some of the thoughts leading to it.

Many writers and tellers of tales throw fairy story re-tellings at me. What I’ve noticed is that fairy stories (and some of the retellings!) develop their own history, which is not always the history of that tale. Sometimes it’s not even close. Today, I want to think about why some things are close and some aren’t. This is not, then, the history of a fairy tale, or even a group of fairy tales. It’s how we look at fairy tales from different views and find different stories. All these variants are part of the history of the fairy tale. 

It all starts with a specific bunch of people (often blokes) who collected tales and codified tales and analysed tales. 

This beginning is long after the stories began to be popular. Very long after. It was after the first wave, second wave, third wave and (possibly) fourth wave of literary tellings of fairy and folk stories. I regard the first wave as the twelfth to thirteenth centuries, the second wave as the late Middle Ages and the third waves as the courts of France later still. The court tales may be one wave, or they may be two. 

There are plenty of other ways of assigning periods to fairy tales. The important thing is that storytellers were collecting specific stories for their personal use long before the Grimm brothers were born. Marie de France told her lais and the seventeenth century tellers of works like the Pentameron came first.

What this means is that Europe has focussed on fairy tales on and off for a very long time. When we talk about nineteenth and twentieth century collectors, we’re marking a new phase in an old phenomenon. The critical thing about those nineteenth and twentieth century collectors is that they were as much focussed on collecting and collection as on telling. Their perspectives have given the twentieth century analysis of fairy tales a district flavour.

I did a course on märchen and other tale types at university many years ago, in another life. We focussed on types of tales and how they were told, how they were broken down into motifs, which cultures used what and how. This is one of the academic approaches to fairy tales. It builds on collections of tales and of motif and on codification of tales and motifs and it looks at form and content. This is one of the results of the nineteenth and twentieth century approach. There’s a track from collectors such as the Grimms and Andrew Lang, through the codifiers (Vladimir Propp, Stith Thompson and Andrew Lang being the ones we mostly looked at when I was nineteen) and to studies by some of the experts. 

Not all of the experts, for this is not the only path. It’s like the roads in the tale of Thomas of Ercildoune: there is a fair one, a twisted and difficult one, and one that might go anywhere but actually leads to fairyland. When I was nineteen, the path to heaven (the difficult path) was through Propp and the motif indices. Now, of course, I’m a writer, and the path to fairyland is the only one.

My studies have taken me to quite different places than those I trod when I was in my teens. What this means is that, although I read work by recent experts in fairy tales and other folklore (Jack Zipes is a favourite of mine) and that they do fascinating things, I’m not longer up-to-date with their approaches and methods. This is a shame, for I’ve finally reached the point where I can see just where what I learned fits in a much wider perspective. I can see how European it is and how linked to a series of literary events, starting with those later collections.

So, where were we? Tales were collected. Tales were codified. Tales were studied.

Let’s bring that European perspective into it and see how it limits things. Vladimir Propp started with tales close to home, so many of the studies have a Russian bias. The Grimm brothers generally used easily accessible sources, so their tales also don’t reflect the universality I was once told they did. This is why the path to academic fairy tale study is thorny and difficult. It’s complicated, and it changes as our understanding changes. Culture is a dynamic creature and fairy tales are always affected by this dynamism.

Analysis these days is much work by many scholars: it’s a whole academic discipline. Quite a few scholars take the traditional path and work through Propp and others and then add their own work. I suspect there’s a comfort in the traditional and that people who love fairy stories want that comfort. What they do with that path is create a narrative about fairy tales that has a European base and bias. It sometimes acknowledges this and discusses the restrictions the bias imposes, and it sometimes doesn’t.

Others find joy in researching the path an actual story has taken, from its first being written down in a particular place and time until it reaches a form they can define as the standard form for that tale. Writers often use these studies like kaleidoscopes and create new visions of old stories simply by the twist of a wrist. My novel, Ms Cellophane, is a variant of Sleeping Beauty, for instance, set in Canberra and featuring a middle-aged woman whose curse is a failed career, rather than a spindle and whose evil fairy is her ex-boss. I alert readers to the fairy tale by the inclusion of a magic mirror. This turns it into my story, my re-telling.

There are modern writers who do their research (including doctorates) on a specific fairy tale (Kate Forsyth just tackled Rapunzel) where they write their novel and also write a book that explores the origins of the story. The dream is to play with folklore and to explore its variants. This fits into one of the academic views: that there is no single perfectly correct text. These writers shift their work closer to the academic norm by giving it a very thorough research underpinning, but are still playing with the kaleidoscope, in reality.

So many books I’ve seen recently take the tale of one particular tale and trace it back and across and around and find out what it’s done in its career. A lot of their research rests on the Grimms of this world and on the codifiers and on earlier academics. I think of it as the Fairy Tale Fortress.

Some are like the writers who want to add variants of their own. A few pursue a single ancient text. An ur-text. This led to scientists using biological descriptions to persuade the world that these ur-texts not only exist but go back thousands of years into our past. Their family trees for tales don’t allow for the complexity of the history of story, so I don’t place any faith in the ancientness of this tale or that.

One fascinating but very real problem with tales is that some cultures don’t divide material into fairy tales as we do. We can damage these cultures when we try to force their stories into a fairy tale model.

The first set of tales written down by an Indigenous Australian was David Unaipon’s collection and it has very little in common with the children’s writers of the same period who wrote their adaptations of Indigenous stories and their interpretation of the Australian landscape to create what they thought were New Australian Fairy Tales. Unaipon’s stories encode lore and law. They’re not simple re-tellings of interesting stories. When writers take what they think of as Aboriginal tales and tell them, divorcing the stories from their origins and their original function and their original owners they not only damage the cultures the tales come from. Doing this without understanding the role of the stories in the original culture says “our belief that fairy stories are universal to humankind is more important than any role these particular stories might have in your culture.”

David Unaipon Image courtesy: http://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/

Songlines mean that tales in Australia change according to country. Some of these stories have been classified as fairy tales according to some definitions and  a lot of people told them as fairy tales until quite recently. There are assumptions that rest under these classifications and some of these assumptions are worrying. 

A single tale assumes a single teller, not the complex cultural negotiations that explain language and lore and land within Indigenous Australian communities. It assumes that the form is correct, even if the story has been transformed to match European tales. It assumes that the collector/s have the authority to tell the tale. It’s a vast and troubled subject and I’m not even a beginner in this field. One thing I know is that modern fairy tale studies are capable of destroying parts of the cultures by trying to translate tales into the European standards we know and love. 

Whose tales are we telling? Do we have the right to re-shape them? When I gave my talk to the Fairy Tale Society, at this stage I explained that we can’t know these things unless we ask. Research, research and more research. Respectful research. Research that considers consequences.

We borrow fairy tales from many cultures other than our own. English-language cultures and the cultures related to many other European languages and also to some Asian languages (Japanese is one) see that this is a legitimate thing to do. This is a big question in the annals of cultural appropriation. I can’t even begin to address it here. All I can do is raise the subject, suggest that research is a powerful tool and that understanding is not an optional extra, and move on.

Let me move onto tales that were inspired by fairy tales rather than actually being folk stories of a particular kind. 

Quite a few of the stories we think of as fairy tales are actually court tales, especially those from the 17^th and 18^th centuries. They’re written for reading aloud or for publication, and some of the writers (Mme D’Aulnoy, for example) are very well known indeed. These stories are very different in form to the fairy tale studied elsewhere. They’re the opposite of the short märchen in so many ways. Culturally, structurally, in terms of audience and underlying themes. This is much studied, particularly in the volumes devoted to the history of a single story.

Less studied are the tales families own. 

When I teach things Medieval, I like to point out that we often have personal versions of the fairy tale. Our own fairy tales. My family has a story about an ancestor that some of us tell and others avoid as being embarrassing. It’s a bit like Richard I’s ancestral one, in that they are more motifs than stories and help us develop a sense of the family. These snippets fit what we need to tell about ourselves. My family needed something quite different to Richard I. Richard I boasted about his ancestress the devil. Mine is much more ordinary, for my cousin told me that we claim royal ancestry. Both stories are equally untrue. Truth isn’t the point of them.

Quite a few important families in the Middle Ages had these kind of stories. They were used in different ways for different reasons and different audiences. The simple codification doesn’t show this clearly, but the moment you read the tales themselves, it’s there. Fairy tales have a deep cultural basis. 

When we read the story of Melusine and think “What a nice story about a fairy!” it’s not immediately obvious that Melusine herself was one of these demon ancestors. She was written into a long tale in the alter Middle Ages. That’s the path that reached the English world. 

Melusine has other paths: there are local stories in various parts of France that don’t owe their lives to Jean d’Arras’ romance about her. Following a clear path is easier, but it can lose us so many types of story. It’s about rural France as much as it’s about Australia.

This is a complicated subject. It can become even more complicated. 

My favourite set of complications was when I applied all the factors I’ve talked about in this article to the various stories of King Arthur. That’s another story for another time. This essay has been quite long enough, and it’s only skimmed a part of the surface.

Interview with Kate Forsyth - Gillian Polack

Today's guest is Australian author Kate Forsyth. Gillian Polack took the opportunity to ask her some questions that she's wanted to ask for quite a while.

I met Australian author Kate Forsyth back in 1999. There are a couple of questions I want to ask her. They’ve been lurking, all this time.

Normally, when I interview someone, I have a pile of linked questions and I weave through them more or less elegantly. In your case, Kate, I just want to know everything, instantly, and I’ve given up on elegance. I had to rewrite the questions, in fact, so they weren’t all “Tell me now!”

Kate, to get us started, would you tell us about yourself and your fiction?

I've always known I wanted to be a writer. Even as a small child, I was always writing poems and stories and telling people it was what I wanted to do when I grew up. I wrote my first novel when I was only seven, and have never had a day since when I wasn't writing something (even if its only my diary that I've kept since I was twelve). I am passionately interested in history and folklore and fairy tales, and they weave their way into all of my work, whether I am writing poems or essays or novels. My first poem was published (in the school magazine) when I was eleven and my first novel was published when I was thirty (it was the first in a heroic fantasy series set in a magical world very much like seventeenth century Scotland). I am now the proud author of thirty-six books ranging from picture books to poetry to epic historical sagas for adults. My best-known book is BITTER GREENS, which is a retelling of Rapunzel in a Renaissance Venice setting, interwoven with the dramatic true life story of the woman who first wrote the tale, the 17th century French noblewoman Charlotte-Rose de la Force who had been banished to a convent after a series of scandalous affairs. The book won the American Library Association Award for Best Historical Novel of 2015, and has also just been voted one of Australia's Best 101 Books. I then wrote THE WILD GIRL, which tells the story of the forbidden romance between Wilhelm Grimm and Dortchen Wild, the young woman who told him many of the world's most favourite fairy tales, against the heart-rending backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars. It was voted the Most Memorable Love Story of the year by Australian readers, a wonderful endorsement! It is just about to come out in the US and is already getting some wonderful reviews.

I've also just finished writing a five-book fantasy adventure series for children called THE IMPOSSIBLE QUEST, and am in the final stages of another historical novel for adults called THE BEAST'S GARDEN, which is a retelling of the Grimms' Beauty & the Beast, set in Nazi Germany. So you can see I really do spend most of my time writing!

I’m fascinated by your fascination with fairy tales. Bitter Greens and The Wild Girl instantly come to mind when I think of this, but your work has had an element of fairy and folk since your very first novel, hasn’t it?


Yes, indeed. My early fantasy books all have a strong element of fairy tale and folklore woven through them, from motifs of cursed towers overgrown with roses to girls who change into owls or wolves. And DANCING ON KNIVES (which is the first novel I wrote as an adult but was not published until a few years later) draws upon The Little Mermaid fairy tale even though it has a contemporary Australian setting.

It all began, I think, because I spent a lot of time in hospital as a child after being savaged by a dog when I was just two years old. There was not much to do in hospital in those days except read, and so I read a great deal. I think I was particularly drawn to tales of magic, adventure and escape because my own life was so constrained by illness and the fear of illness. My mother gave me a beautiful red leather-bound copy of Grimms' Fairy tales when I was about seven, and I read the book so many times it fell to pieces. Those wonderful, frightening stories wove themselves into my imagination and have continued to fascinate me ever since.



My greatest interest is that you don’t simply take the tales and re-tell, you find their cultural and historical contexts and weave them into the tales. Would you tell us more about your relationship with fairy tales and folk tales?

I love fairy tale retellings. Growing up I devoured the work of writers such as Eleanor Farjeon, Nicholas Stuart Gray and - a little later, Robin McKinley - who wrote what I call 'pure' retellings - ones set in a fairy-tale-like setting with plots that closely follow the best-known variant of a tale, which is usually the Grimm Brothers'. Such 'pure' retellings have become very popular and we have seen work by such writers as Gail Carson Levine, Shannon Hale, Jessica Day George, and Edith Pattou, who have all written fairy tale fantasies for a young adult market. Then we began to see such fairy-tale-inspired fiction for adult readers, by writers like Juliet Marillier and Margo Lanagan and Jane Yolen, who have taken old stories and reworked them in marvellously new and innovative ways. And I loved their work as well.

I have also always loved historical fiction - its my favourite genre of all. Growing up, I read Rosemary Sutcliff and Geoffrey Trease and Leon Garfield, and now I read as much historical fiction and non-fiction as I can. I think it was because I loved history so much that I first got the idea of re-writing 'Rapunzel' as a historical novel, rather than as a fantasy. Or perhaps it was because I come from an academic family (my father was a scientist and my mother studied psychology & anthropology) and so I was raised to question everything and to dig deeper, to look for facts rather than hearsay. And because I am an oral storyteller as well as an author, I was always going to be interested in who told the tale. All of these obsessions - history, psychology, folklore, storytelling - led me to want to know as much as I could about the background of the tale and the tale's tellers. I ended up doing my doctorate on 'Rapunzel' - since I was doing so much research I thought I might as well use it! - and along the way discovered the extraordinary life of an all-but-forgotten 17th century fairy tale teller. Bringing Charlotte-Rose de la Force's story to life meant trying to understand the milieu in which she lived, and so I was also researching the life and times of her cousin, Louis XIV, the Sun King, and the world of the royal court at Versailles.

In all, it took me seven years to research and write BITTER GREENS and to finish my doctorate. And my later fairy-tale-inspired-historical novels, THE WILD GIRL and the upcoming THE BEAST'S GARDEN, both arose out of discoveries I made during those years of research.

THE WILD GIRL in particular was a challenge, because very little was known about Dortchen Wild, who told a quarter of all the tales collected by the Grimm brothers and published in their first edition of fairy tales. Like so many women of her time, she left very little behind her in the way of letters, diaries, stories and other writings, and I had to use the stories she told Wilhelm as a template for her inner life. It was a truly fascinating process!


Now, of course, you’ve done a doctorate on fairy tales. How does it fit with your earlier work? Has it changed your writing and the tales you want to tell?

As we discussed earlier, I have always been interested in fairy tales and folklore, and so undertaking a doctorate in that area has only fed my obsession. During the time I was doing my doctorate, I also studied oral storytelling and am now an accredited master storyteller with the Australian Guild of Storytellers. So these two interests of mine have continued to lead me deeper onto the dark, tangled woods of fairy tale studies. I cannot tell you if it has changed my writing, though I can see a difference in style to the books I wrote in my 20s and the ones I am now writing in my 40s. I think that is a natural growth and progression.

For the moment, I am bubbling over with ideas for new books that combine historical fiction with fairy tale retellings in new and innovative ways. One that I am just beginning to play with is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty set amongst the love affairs and scandals of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. I am coming to the UK in June to run a writing retreat in the Cotswolds and plan to spend my spare time gazing at paintings and prowling around At and Crafts houses. It's very exciting!



You also have an interest in history. Is it the pull of a period or place? Is it an interest in research and the past? Is it the need to delve into the background of the story and to ground it in something our culture knows? Why history? Which history? Whose history?

It's all these things! And yet, each book is a little different too. Setting is very important to me, and so I am drawn to certain times and places, such as Renaissance Venice or Paris and Versailles in the time of the Sun King, which were the settings of BITTER GREENS. Yet I was not at all interested in the Holy Roman Empire of German Nations during the Napoleonic Wars ... it was the untold love story Wilhelm Grimm and Dortchen Wild that drew me to that time and place and I had to do a great deal of research before I could even begin to understand it and bring it to life in THE WILD GIRL. I was always deeply fascinated by the Second World War, and in stories of heroism and resistance during that dark time, and had always wanted to set a book then. Somehow my subconscious mind put that wish together with the desire to retell Beauty and the Beast, and came up with something truly surprising and unexpected.

I am also very interested in art and poetry and music and so these things work their way into my fiction. The Venetian artist Titian was a key character in BITTER GREENS. In THE WILD GIRL, I grew very interested in the German Romantic poet Novalis and also listened to a great deal of Beethoven. And I've always loved the Pre-Raphaelites and their art, and so this new book is born out of a desire to know more about them ... and also to rescue the all-but-forgotten Victorian fairy tale teller, Mary de Morgan, who was a shadowy figure on the edge of their bright circle,

Many of my books are about untold stories ... and forgotten women ... and the redemptive power of storytelling in its many different forms. Why I am drawn to telling these stories? I don't know. Mystery is at the heart of all creation. I suspect it has something to do with a fear of being forgotten myself ... which is in itself a fear of death. I just know that these stories come to possess me, and that I cannot rest until I have brought them to life, in the most beautiful and meaningful way that I can.



Speaking of history, would you tell us something about your work as the patron of the Historical Novel Society of Australasia?


It would be my pleasure. About twenty years ago, when I was a young woman who desperately wanted to be a writer, it was hard to find the kind of books I wanted to read. I felt very alone in my passionate love for historical fiction, and would search the bookshop shelves for anything I could find that had a historical or quasi-historical setting. Some years later, I wrote my first historical novel (THE GYPSY CROWN, a children's adventure story about two Romany children during the final weeks of Oliver Cromwell's life.) I heard that there was a Historical Novel Society, which published magazines of book reviews and held an annual conference somewhere in the world. I was tremendously excited and joined up straightaway. I poured over their magazines and highlighted books I wanted to read, then hunted them down over the internet. When my novel THE PUZZLE RING was published (a children's time travel story about a twelve year old girl who goes back in time to the days of Mary, Queen of Scots), I used my a good portion of my US advance to go to my first-ever HNS conference in Chicago. It was so wonderful! I made so many friends and I learnt so much. If I could, I would go every year - but its hard for me to be away from my little family too often and it can be very expensive. I wished that we could have a conference here in Australia. Other Australian writers and readers wished the same thing. And a few stalwart souls did something about it (Chris Foley, Elisabeth Storrs, Wendy Jean Dunn, Diane Murray, and Greg Johnstone) and put together an absolutely brilliant weekend event in late March. My job as patron was to spread the word as best I could, make a rather alarming amount of speeches, and turn up and smile. Which I was very happy to do. It was a resounding success, and the next conference is already being planned for Melbourne in 2017. Any English historical fiction who have ever dreamed of visiting Australia may want to plan about it (A Tip: Australian readers are big book buyers!)




Kate Forsyth wrote her first novel at seven, and is now the award-winning & internationally bestselling author of 36 books. Recently voted one of Australia's Favourite 20 Novelists, Kate has a doctorate in fairy tale studies and is an accredited master storyteller. Her adult books include The Wild Girl, the story of the forbidden romance behind the Grimm Brothers’ famous fairy tales, and Bitter Greens, called ‘the best fairy tale retelling since Angela Carter’. It won the 2015 ALA Prize for Best Historical Fiction and came in at No 27 in Dymocks 2015 list of Australia’s Top 101 Books. Kate’s children’s novels include The Impossible Quest, The Puzzle Ring and award-winning The Gypsy Crown. Kate is a direct descendant of Charlotte Waring Atkinson, the author of the first book for children ever published in Australia Read more at www.kateforsyth.com.au

Have written a fairytale. Will travel? Not always! – Katherine Roberts

In less than a month, Grail of Stars, the final book of my Pendragon Legacy quartet for young readers about King Arthur’s daughter, will be published – at least it will be published here in the UK. But not as yet in the US, since this series is considered “too English” for the American market.

Too English!

King Arthur

Well, yes... this series is based on the legend of King Arthur, who was inescapably an English king and/or warlord, if he existed - of which there is some doubt. But King Arthur is killed in battle the day before the first book begins, so my series is actually about his daughter Rhianna Pendragon, a purely fictional character, and her three young friends – also invented by me, one of whom is a fairy and decidedly un-English (though I have to admit he’s not exactly an American fairy, either!)

And yes, as a traditional background for Rhianna’s quest, I did place my Camelot in Somerset on Cadbury Hill, and I located one of the gateways to the enchanted isle of Avalon a few miles away at Glastonbury Tor – although Avalon itself, being fairyland, could be anywhere, even in America. Other ‘English’ scenes are my battles, one of which takes place at Hadrian’s Wall (so possibly our northern cousins would dispute that), and there are plenty of dragon capers around the Welsh valleys in the third book - again not really English. Some of the action in the books takes place on the shores of Avalon, and the fourth book takes my characters across the sea to the Grail Castle - another enchanted location, and maybe somewhere you can reach by boat from English shores, which leaves things wide open, though my bet’s on France.

But I can see what American publishers mean. After all, this is not the first time one of my creations has failed to travel across the Pond. My Seven Fabulous Wonders series - a mixture of fantasy and history based on the old gods and monsters of the time - also failed to sell to an American publisher, since although these books are not English, they were considered “too European” for the American market.

Too European!

The Great Pyramid at Giza, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (my own painting).

They were maybe even a bit too European for the English market, according to a recent survey reported by the Daily Mail. Apparently, only 61% of the British population can name one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the most popular choice being the Great Pyramid (though asking which of the three pyramids at Giza is the actual Wonder might reduce that percentage - if you're curious, it's the oldest one on the right, also the largest, the tomb of Khufu). Only 21% can name a second Wonder on the list, and a mere 6% can list all seven. In fact, an embarrassing 12% of Britons today cannot name a single one, and consider these monuments listed by the ancient Greeks as the wonders of their world to be boring! I suppose the clue is in that word “ancient” – those largely vanished old temples and statues have a bit more competition now that we have so many more modern wonders to marvel at. Also, remember, the world of the ancient Greeks was based around the Mediterranean and Persia, which did not include America.

If you are a US publisher, you'll probably gently remind me at this point that publishing decisions are based on other factors than geographical boundaries, that it’s an increasingly cut-throat business, and everyone is watching the bottom line these days. All of which I understand – I’m no starry-eyed debut author, and I'm not picking on our American cousins by any means, since the same could be said of books that do not travel to China, or even fail to make the short hop across the channel into modern Europe - although in their case there is an extra cost involved with the need to translate the story into a different language. Happily, my Seven Fabulous Wonders did eventually make it into 12 languages, perhaps proving their European appeal, and the Pendragon Legacy is making a good start with French and Turkish deals agreed and others hopefully in the pipeline.

Yet it seems this failure of fantasy stories (which are essentially fairytales, and therefore ought to travel quite easily) to cross geographical boundaries is not a recent thing. I bought this book from a second-hand bookstall the other day, because I fell in love with the beautiful cover:

It is a collection of the original fairytales by the Brothers Grimm, who lived in 18th/19th century Germany, and contains some of perhaps the most famous fairytales of all time. There are detailed notes on the stories in the back, and I was particularly fascinated by the “omitted tales”, and the reasons they were thrown out of this collection at some stage.

These omitted tales include:

Too French!

The Nightingale and the Blindworm, Puss in Boots, Simple Hans, Bluebeard, Okerlo, and Princess Mouseskin were all omitted in 1819 because of their French origins. (Any historian out there hazard a guess as to why?)

Too Scottish!

The Hand With the Knife was omitted in 1819 because of its Scottish origins.

Too Dutch!

The Castle of Murder was omitted in 1819 due to its Dutch origins.

Too Mongolian!

The Faithful Animals was omitted in 1850 because it came from a collection of Mongolian tales.

And a couple of other reasons not really to do with geographical boundaries, but more with culture:

Too Historical!

The Children of Famine and Saint Solicitous were omitted in 1819 because they were too much like legend. (Um, King Arthur's daughter, are you listening?)

Too Gruesome!

How some Children Played at Slaughtering, The Stepmother, and The Children of Famine (doubly unpopular, that one, it seems.)

As you've probably noticed, the omitted tales include some of our best-known fairytales such as Puss in Boots and Bluebeard, so clearly fashions change over time, and also change when stories cross geographical boundaries. How Some Children Played at Slaughtering could even be an early forerunner of  The Hunger Games, one of our most popular YA series today!

So maybe I should not be too upset by “too English” and “too European”, or even "too historical" and "too gruesome"? I am after all an English author and have always felt more European than American culture-wise, even if we do share a language. Perhaps that is why my muse is drawn towards European legends and history? Also, writing something European does not necessarily mean it won’t be published in America – it just has a harder time over there. For example, my Alexander the Great novel from the horse's mouth I am the Great Horse, which one American reviewer (the 2 star one if you follow the B&N link) slammed as unsuitable for children due to its gruesome battle scenes and suggestion of homosexuality, had a hardcover American edition. It did not in the end make it into paperback over there – although I am happy to report this book is now available worldwide as an ebook (see below), crossing geographical boundaries at the click of a key.

The main downside of such labels, of course, is financial. The American market, love it or hate it, is essential in terms of making a living at this writing business. I am now in that scary space between books when I need to decide what to write next, and embarking on new work that I know is going to slam into a geographical wall is probably not the most sensible thing for my career right now.

Of course, in hindsight, I could have set my Greek gods and monsters from the Seven Fabulous Wonders in an American summer camp (like Percy Jackson), or put King Arthur’s daughter and Avalon in space (like the other Pendragon Legacy), shaking off their “too European” and “too English” objections at the outset. No doubt the same approach would work for many other English or European ideas. But they would have lost some of their essential culture and soul along the way. The book that is really begging me to write it next – the one I started last week, meaning to do an hour maybe and ended up writing into the night – is set in ancient Rome. European history again, arghh! I haven’t dared tell my publisher about it, because I do have more American-friendly fantasy series idea, although in the wayward manner of my muse I’ve not written a word of that one yet.

I just know what my editor is going to say...

***

Katherine Roberts writes fantasy and historical fantasy for young readers.

Visit her website for more details www.katherineroberts.co.uk

If you are a slightly older reader, you might like to try her Alexander the Great novel,

now available as an ebook from:

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