Heidi Anne Heiner's Blog, page 123

New Book: Snow White Must Die by Nele Neuhaus

Snow White Must Die by Nele Neuhaus (Author), Steven T. Murray (Translator) was released stateside in January.

Book description:

Snow White Must Die by Nele Neuhaus is a tremendous new contemporary mystery series and huge international bestseller—with more than 3.5 million copies in print!
On a rainy November day police detectives Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver von Bodenstein are summoned to a mysterious traffic accident: A woman has fallen from a pedestrian bridge onto a car driving underneath. According to a witness, the woman may have been pushed. The investigation leads Pia and Oliver to a small village, and the home of the victim, Rita Cramer.

On a September evening eleven years earlier, two seventeen-year-old girls vanished from the village without a trace. In a trial based only on circumstantial evidence, twenty-year-old Tobias Sartorius, Rita Cramer’s son, was sentenced to ten years in prison. Bodenstein and Kirchhoff discover that Tobias, after serving his sentence, has now returned to his home town. Did the attack on his mother have something to do with his return?

In the village, Pia and Oliver encounter a wall of silence. When another young girl disappears, the events of the past seem to be repeating themselves in a disastrous manner. The investigation turns into a race against time, because for the villagers it is soon clear who the perpetrator is—and this time they are determined to take matters into their own hands.

An atmospheric, character-driven and suspenseful mystery set in a small town that could be anywhere, dealing with issues of gossip, power, and keeping up appearances.

Here's a starred review from Publishers Weekly, too:

German author Neuhaus makes her U.S. debut with this impressive multidimensional police procedural, which has already been published in 15 countries with more than three million copies in print. Convicted on circumstantial evidence of murdering two vanished 17-year-old girls, 30-year-old Tobias Sartorius returns home to Altenhain, a village near Frankfurt, after serving his 10-year sentence, to find his parents divorced and their lives as hopeless as his has become. The townspeople maintain a mafia-like code of silence to protect terrible betrayals past and present, even as the discovery of the skeletal remains of one of the missing girls leads Det. Insp. Pia Kirchhoff and Det. Sgt. Oliver von Bodenstein to suspect Tobias was innocent. Meanwhile, the two police officers get caught up in personal crises that realistically counterpoint the violence that greets Tobias's attempts to re-establish his life, when yet another girl goes missing and masked villagers nearly kill him. Again and again, Neuhaus inserts the old Grimm fairy tale refrain—"White as snow, red as blood, black as ebony"—that describes Snow White, the role of one of the original missing girls in a high school play 10 years earlier, to underscore the grimmest of human emotions: white for icily plotted revenge, red for raging jealousy, black for homicidal madness.

Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty

Oh, to be in the UK! Some of you are so this is still a possibility: Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty. Tour dates can be found here. While I will always love The Nutcracker and it is a sentimental favorite, Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty is a favorite, too, and one of the reasons one of my favorite of the Disney fairy tales is Sleeping Beauty since they were wise to use it, too.

 From the official website:

Matthew Bourne’s SLEEPING BEAUTY sees the choreographer return to the music of Tchaikovsky to complete the trio of the composer’s ballet masterworks that started in 1992 with Nutcracker! and, most famously, in 1995, with the international hit Swan Lake. Perrault’s timeless fairy tale, about a young girl cursed to sleep for one hundred years, was turned into a legendary ballet by Tchaikovsky and choreographer, Marius Petipa, in 1890. Bourne takes this date as his starting point, setting the Christening of Aurora, the story’s heroine, in the year of the ballets first performance; the height of the Fin-de-Siecle period when fairies, vampires and decadent opulence fed the gothic imagination. As Aurora grows into a young woman, we move forwards in time to the more rigid, uptight Edwardian era; a mythical golden age of long Summer afternoons, croquet on the lawn and new dance crazes. Years later, awakening from her century long slumber, Aurora finds herself in the modern day; a world more mysterious and wonderful than any Fairy story! Matthew Bourne’s haunting new scenario is a gothic fairy tale for all ages; the traditional tale of good vs. evil and rebirth is turned upside-down, creating a supernatural love story, across the decades, that even the passage of time itself cannot hinder. Britain’s most popular dance showman works again with three of his regular collaborators, and New Adventures Associate Artists; The Tony and Olivier award winning designers, Lez Brotherston (set and costumes) and Paule Constable (Lighting) and Sound Designer, Paul Groothuis who created the acclaimed surround-sound for last years hit production of Cinderella.

Anyway, the costuming, the choreography and the music are stunning as shown in the video clip above. If the full version ever makes its way online or onto DVD, please someone share it with me. I would LOVE to see this.

Goblin Fruit Winter 2013

The Winter Issue of Goblin Fruit is online. If you are not familiar, this is a quarterly online publication which shares poetry with a fantasy and fairy tale inspiration.

And you really should visit just to see Betsie Withey beautiful header graphics for the issue. My husband, the visual artist in the family, kept walking by my office door and commenting on it. ("I should do some illustrative art for you (meaning SurLaLune)" was the final result. Yes, I think, that and some more logos, yes?)

Table of Contents:

Triumph XIII: Chaaya by Shweta Narayan
The Journeymaker, Climbing by Rose Lemberg
Sleeping Beauty Makes Dinner by Sally Rosen Kindred
The Jackdaw, Married by Mathew Joiner
Silver by Andy Humphrey
Grief by Jennifer Jerome
It Is Winter and Everything Is Cold, Thinks Robber Girl by Charlotte Bhaskar
Lament for a Faithless Prince by Ada Hoffmann
Moral by Alicia Cole
Tent Worms by Laura Lee Washburn
The Journeymaker to Keddar by Rose Lemberg
As Long As There Are Husbands in Winter by Phyllis Holliday

Kay Nielsen's Little Mermaid

Kay Nielsen is a favorite illustrator for many readers here so I had to share this unusual Little Mermaid illustration although it's been floating around the new for a few years now. You can see the rest of his preliminary sketches for Little Mermaid at The Scepter on LiveJournal. Don't miss them!

The work is obviously sketches and unfinished work but there is enough there to imagine the look and feel of what Disney might have made Little Mermaid appear like in the mid 1940s versus what we got 40+ years later. Nielsen did influence what we saw in Fantasia and Sleeping Beauty, which is one of my visual favorites of the Disney fairy tales.

It has never been my favorite fairy tale--and it is hard to imagine that Nielsen's version would have been a  commercial success during the war-ridden years--but it would have been brilliant, I think.

Bargain Books: Puss in Boots by Ed McBain

I've previously shared Ed McBain's Matthew Hope/Fairy Tale mystery series, loosely using fairy tales, but popular mysteries. Well, one of the books in the series--Puss in Boots (Matthew Hope)--is bargain priced at $2.00 instead of the usual $4.99 for ebook format. They are mostly out of print in paper.

Book description:

A long shadow looms above her. Then a hand clamps over her mouth and a blade sinks into her back. Blood splatters on the film reel case beside her, and a young life is cut short.

Lawyer Matthew Hope gets a call from Carlton Markham, who’s been arrested for his filmmaker wife’s murder but says he didn’t do it. Witnesses fly forward to proclaim his guilt, but Markham’s not giving up that easily on his innocence. And when Matthew digs deeper into the victim’s business—from heavy financial backers to sleazy egomaniacs—he finds she may not have been the perfect lady she had seemed. The one piece of evidence that could set Markham free and finger the real killer is the victim’s film reel. Only it’s gone, along with the film’s sexy star. Now Matthew needs to infiltrate the seedy side of the film industry in order to find the missing reel and solve the murder.

From master storyteller Ed McBain, Puss in Boots is another Matthew Hope Mystery classic, the tale of a woman who aimed too high and the many men who fell for it all.

About the Author

Born in New York, Evan Hunter (1926–2005) wrote the screen play for Hitchcock’s The Birds in 1963. He received the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and is one of three American writers to be awarded the Diamond Dagger for a lifetime of achievement by the British Crime Writers Association. Under the name Ed McBain, he authored the sprawling 87th Precinct series — the longest, most varied crime series in the world — which includes fifty-five novels about a fictional team of policemen, and thirteen novels in the Matthew Hope series featuring an up-and-coming lawyer in the Florida Gulf Coast. Known for tackling controversial content with a thoughtful eye, he is the author of over eighty novels.

Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing Trailer!

Okay, almost completely off topic but I am so very EXCITED about this one. Of course, I do have that English degree which means I've read and watched my fair share of Shakespeare. And I am a nerd whose record for most viewings of a movie in a theatre still belongs to Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing [Blu-ray]. Eight times in the summer of 1993 in a little out of the way theatre in Nashville, so it was a jaunt and a challenge to find friends willing to come along. I bought a lot of tickets to that movie. It was the perfect movie for me that year despite its flaws.


And I've barely watched it since. I might have to queue it up soon. I wonder how much of it I still have memorized 20 years later. This was the only Shakespeare play I had read in high school without the assistance of a film version and it had eluded me then. When it finally came to life on screen for me five years later, I adored it. Shakespeare should always be watched first, never read first, IMHO. Especially by modern school kids. Watched, read, and then watched again. Cause you lose them otherwise.

Anyway, I will be seeing Whedon's version as soon as it becomes available here in Nashville. John the husband rejoices since getting me to a movie theatre these days is NOT easy. And he loves Whedon's work, too. I infinitely prefer waiting a few more months to watch it at home on DVD or whatever else. But Shakespeare through Whedon's eye should get me there without much complaint.

2012 Nebula Awards Nominees

Again, I'm late on this, but wow, the Nebula Awards nominees are impressive this year. Well, they are every year but they are a strong reminder to me of how far the genre has come in my lifetime of 40 years. My gateway to adult SFF was Anne McCaffrey like it was for so many others decades ago, leaping from Madeleine L'Engle, Robin McKinley, and Vonda McIntyre, among others. And I remember being ridiculed by the one other SFF reader--male, of course--in my high school freshman geometry class for reading her. She wasn't Frank Herbert so I was to be mocked. Bujold was just breaking into the genre at that point and I was ignorant of her existence.

The Nebula Nominee lists are overall female dominated and a fair tale retelling even made the Andre Norton YA short list--Enchanted by Alethea Konis.

Have you read that one yet? It made many Best of Lists for 2012!

But to honor all of these authors, I'll share the complete Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy nominees list:

Iron Hearted Violet, Kelly Barnhill (Little, Brown)
Black Heart, Holly Black (S&S/McElderry; Gollancz)
Above, Leah Bobet (Levine)
The Diviners, Libba Bray (Little, Brown; Atom)
Vessel, Sarah Beth Durst (S&S/McElderry)
Seraphina, Rachel Hartman (Random House Children’s Books; Doubleday UK)
Enchanted, Alethea Kontis (Harcourt)
Every Day, David Levithan (Knopf Books for Young Readers)
Summer of the Mariposas, Guadalupe Garcia McCall (Tu Books)
Railsea, China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan)
Fair Coin, E.C. Myers (Pyr)
Above World, Jenn Reese (Candlewick)

The awards will be announced in May.

And part of me hates saying these things, but hey, I love all good writers and several not so good ones, whatever gender they may be. But getting respect can still be an issue at times even in this century.

And it's Women's History Month. Let's celebrate!

Children's Literature Conference in Bologna, Italy

There is a Children's Literature Conference in Bologna, Italy. I didn't find a website for the conference, but learned about it through the SDSU CHILDREN'S LITERATURE blog:

While most of you who are reading this blog will not be able to take an impromptu trip to Italy at the end of the month, you should still take a look at the conference line-up for "Children's Literature: Fifty Years of Books for Children's Around the World," scheduled for March 28 at the University of Bologna.

SDSU Professor Emeritus Jerry Griswold is presenting a panel titled "10 Landmarks in U.S. Children's Books in the Last 50 Years," and many other notable scholars from around the world are presenting on fascinating topics. If I could attend this conference, I would definitely check out "Revisualizing Little Red Riding Hood over the Past Fifty Years" and "Realism, Surrealism, and Hyperrealism in American Children's Book Illustration."

So if you happen to enjoy children's literature studies and are in Italy and can attend--well, I envy you!

Here's the program (clickable to read better):

Teen Author Boot Camp

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One of the most important things I did when I was younger was be precocious and attend conferences and workshops while in high school and college. That was how I realized I wanted an M.I.S. instead of a PhD in Literature. Which got us all here today. I made friends, connections and many, many realizations while increasing my understanding of how the real world worked, especially publishing.

So when I see opportunities like Teen Author Boot Camp, I share the news despite being in no way associated with it. For readers here, the event will be of interest due to presentations from authors who use fairy tales for inspiration, namely Shannon Hale and Jannette Rallison as well as other popular fantasy authors like Aprilynne Pike and Kiersten White. See the entire list of partipicating book people (authors, illustrators, etc) here. That's worth the price of attendance. The event itself is in Utah and limited to teens but it is available for participation online for apparently any and all ages. Excellent! You don't have to travel to attend! Just have a great internet connection.

Even better news, Hale's keynote address will be free to watch for everyone. I've heard her speak several times now, gotten to converse with her a few, too, and she's GREAT. An excellent and funny public speaker who will inspire you. If you like reading, writing, fairy tales, laughing--then you should listen to her speak. She also is blunt and honest about writing and publishing for those who are interested. And she does it all as the mother of four, twins included. And don't we all have to love her for bringing The Goose Girl and Maid Maleen out of full modern obscurity?

The most unfortunate part of the event is the lack of a great explanation of what it is, so I will borrow from the great blog, Word for Teens, where the event is explained very well:

The Teen Author Boot Camp, founded by the Utah-based group Writers Cubed and sponsored by Utah Valley University is one of only a few writing conferences nationwide geared solely for teenagers who have a love for the written word. For the first time ever, Writers Cubed is offering the conference to anyone who wants to attend through Live Stream.

Interested? Here are the deets!

When: Saturday, March 16, 2013
From: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (MST)
Where: Worldwide via the internet
Who: Teens, teachers, librarians, book lovers
Cost: $4.99 for the Live Broadcast; $9.99 for the All Pass

The keynote address by Newbery Winning Author Shannon Hale will be free for anyone to watch. It will be on March, 16th, 2013 at 9 a.m. MST. A subscription to the Live Broadcast costs $4.99 and includes the following:

9:00 - 9:15 a.m.: Writers Cubed: Welcome
9:15 - 9:55 a.m.: Keynote by Newbery Award winner Shannon Hale (Princess Academy)
10:00 - 10:45 a.m.: Tyler Whitesides (Janitors)
Class: Imagine and Create.
10:55 - 11:40 a.m.: Janette Rallison (My Fair Godmother)
Class: Bad dialogue can kill a story.
12:50 - 1:35 p.m.: NYT bestseller Kiersten White (Paranormalcy) Class: Plot Like a Villain.
1:45 - 2:30 p.m.: J. Scott Savage (Farworld)
Class: Finding Your Voice.
2:50 - 3:25 p.m.: Journey to Publication Panel
Agent Amy Jameson & authors Chad Morris, Tess Hilmo, J. Scott Savage, Cindy Bennett
3:35 - 4:20 p.m.: NYT bestseller Aprilynne Pike (Wings)
Class: World-building is the invisible foundation to your book.
4:30 - 4:45 p.m.:
Writers Cubed: Winner of the First Chapter Contest and closing remarks.

If you just can’t get enough of TABC, there is also an All Pass Subscription to the rest of the conference (including more than fifteen awesome presentations, including mine--haha). That only costs $9.99 and, as if it wasn’t a sweet enough deal already, you can watch the whole conference whenever you want for an entire year.

To register to watch Shannon Hale’s Keynote for free, visit www.teenauthorbootcamp.com and click on Livestream. It only takes a minute. While you’re there, check out the other presenters who will be teaching at the conference under the tab “Drill Sergeants.”

Film News: Emma Watson and Cinderella

I'm catching up on some film news for various projects, some a few weeks old, but wanted to have it here on the blog either way!

From Emma Watson Trying on Glass Slipper for Disney’s ‘Cinderella’ (EXCLUSIVE):

Disney would like to slip the glass slipper onto Emma Watson as the star of “Cinderella.”

While the actress does not yet have the role, Watson is in very early talks with the studio to play the character in the live action adaptation that Kenneth Branagh will direct, and Simon Kinberg will produce. Cate Blanchett will play the wicked stepmother.

It’s the latest fairy tale the Mouse House is getting into the megaplex after Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland,” Sam Raimi’s “Oz: The Great and Powerful,” and Angelina Jolie vehicle “Maleficent,” based on “Sleeping Beauty’s” villainess.

*****

The Disney version isn’t the first time Watson has circled the Cinderella role.

In 2009, she considered starring in a musical featuring the character that Marilyn Manson was planning to write and direct.

So Cinderella has not been forgotten in the recent spate of Snow White awareness...