About "The Secret Lives of Fairy Tales"

The Secret Lives of Fairy Tales goes up today at the Book View Cafe.

This story grew out of a conversation I had with someone at a convention. The individual in question liked stories that gave him the proverbial "sense of wonder."

I don't read SF or fantasy for that reason. I like the real world and I like the fiction to have that same sense of verisimilitude of the real world. Or, as I like to say it to myself, some writers make the mundane fantastic; I make the fantastic mundane.

It's a gift.

I had just read some fairy tale retellings and I was struck by how they had retained the traditional disconnect between reality and fantasy even while they had placed them in urban settings, political intrigue and the bedroom. Elves were still elven. Fairies were still fairy. From what I could tell, the fairy tales were changed in setting only. It was a retelling without reimagination.

So I thought I'd give it a try.