Suzy Davies's Blog: Book News - Posts Tagged "magical-realism"

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Follow this link to preview the stunning artwork in our Alaskan fairytale book - "The Girl in the Red Cape" Our book is sure to delight children 8 years plus and their adults! What a great way to celebrate the great race and experience a taste of adventure!

Let me take you back to London Town, in the old days. A sister and brother live in an upstairs tenement.They are poor and not yet worldly-wise. My book, “The Snow Queen” takes you to this London you may already know or have read about. But although the metropolis is very real, it is seen through a magic lens in the mind’s eye.

The city shivers with chiming voices on fragile winds that sigh. The presence of an ethereal beauty rides the wintry landscape. Children are in a playground on the swings. Back and for, back and for, they ride. Time stands still in an innocent world of cars and trains, traffic lights, steaming chips and ketchup, Christmas trees and oily rainbows on cracked concrete… and Mum at home awaiting them…

Yet as they grow, and the years pass slowly, someone else — a wizard — is watching. He has a plan. To conjure a spell to ensnare a boy, a teenager of good character, a hard-working boy, Adam. He will be The First Slave.

And so, through this dark conjuring, this malevolent wizardry, the world of reality and the world of magic collide. The dark force of the wizard’s magic will be known and felt. And the children of the world will be held captives forever…

Far, far away, over the ocean, all the enchantment and wonder of a glittering winter; a winter in The Snowlands, a place of mystical animals that tread the land and soar on the wind awaits. This is a mythological land of dreams.

A shoemaker is making a boot fit for a king. A princess awaits in her Danish castle with her horses who follow the star of Pegasus. A seamstress in Rovaniemi is sewing a gown of sparkling threads and jewel-drops, fit for a queen.

The Snow Queen resides in the frozen glass Ice Palace in Norway. She is waiting for her wizard. Together, they will be an evil power couple, and rule till the end of days.

A Snow Goose rides through the storm, carrying Sean to his one true love.

A brave dwarf has a plan…

Adam slumbers, a prisoner, alone in the fairy tower on the west wing of The Ice Palace. Beside his bed, a game of chess, the black king toppled over.

Aragog lies in wait in her glistening web …and always, there’s dark magic…
The wind whistles through the skeleton tree. In her crystal ball, the old gypsy caught a glimpse of what would befall her daughter. The three sisters cast their spells, harnessing good and the forces of nature.

There is yet a ray of hope. Truth be told in the prophecy of The Book of The Ancients.

In a fair world of good and evil, there’s a battle ahead. Justice is all in this moral universe. Darkness consumes itself. The Light shines forever. Shimmering rainbows dance through shadows in the snow. Celestial light glows from the heavens.

The world of “The Snow Queen” is a romantic world; a fairytale, of castles and queens, rivalry, jealousy, revenge, destiny and inheritance. It is a world of sacrifice and redemption.

My book is an epic love story. Bryony, a young warrior with dark gypsy eyes, is the heroine. Over the sea, as if in a dream, she rides, and back again, on an ocean of forgiveness, to a land, long forgotten, back in time…

The Idea for The Snow Queen

My book is a reimagining of Hans Christian Andersen’s original story.The seed of an idea to have a gypsy protagonist in my story came from my late dad’s cousin who was a television producer for Children’s BBC Wales. At a churchyard gate, in Llanberis, she informed me that on my late dad’s side of the family, we are descended from Roma people.

My Writing Process

I have written at length about my writing process on Goodreads. Basically, I combine plotter and pantser tactics. I have an outline of the story and a sense of an ending before I begin writing. However, I think you can overplan, so I revise and adjust my ending at intervals in line with the resolution of the story. The characters “tell me” which way to go. It’s a process of forward and back, and thorough editing before it all comes together. I think spontaneity is what makes writing full of life and exciting. From the seed of an idea, to outlining, writing and several edits, it takes me about 18 months to write a book this length. Part of this is because I enjoy tackling a variety of projects so I am never working on one project full time until I reach the editing stage.

A Meeting of Hearts, Hands and Minds

After writing my book, I wondered how best I might share it with people across the globe. It was just like a fairytale, a dream come true, when I discovered, quite by chance, the enchanting multi faceted world of air and paper created by the world-acclaimed paper cut artist, Bit Vejle, who is the founder of The Museum for Paper Art in Blokhus, Denmark. My fairytale journey did not end there. I revisited Musuem Odense, and found the courage to approach them with a view to featuring some of Hans Christian Andersen’s paper cuts in the paperback and hardback editions of my work. I was so fortunate that Niels Friis agreed, much to my delight! Now our book is a dream come true — something I have dreamed about all my life!

Book Blurb

The Robber Girl is back! Bryony has a special destiny, foretold in The Book of The Ancients.With her dark eyes on a handsome Roma boy, Sean, and a gypsy crown, she has a battle to win, cheating death. She must rescue Adam from the Snow Queen’s web of evil, defeating the wizard and his dark sorcery. If she fails, the evil couple will cast a maleficent shadow of doom across the world, enslaving all children until the end of time. In this tale of romance, magic, rivalry, inheritance and destiny, a heartwarming epic journey awaits.

What is your book about?
Brother and sister, Billy and Stella compete in the Junior Race with their dog-sledding teams. All kinds of dangers await them, not least the wolves. Their step-brother, Tom, a solitary Inuk, has angered the pack. Queen Wolf is missing. The wolves will make good their loss or seek their revenge.

At the heart of the story, Stella, a rookie musher, is on the threshold of womanhood. “The Girl in the Red Cape” is running with wolves, dancing across the virgin snow. All alone, it’s Stella against the wilderness. But sometimes an invisible power supports her. And she has her loving Gran, always by her side, and friends who encourage her.

Stella, now grown, will catch a dream…

My book is a heartwarming action adventure fairytale, that speaks of the power of family, friendship, loyalty and courage, qualities we all need to succeed in life and flourish.

What is your inspiration for the story?
My inspiration for this book comes from my reading and my childhood. I have always loved fairytales, and my favorites are those classic reads written by Charles Perrault and by Hans Christian Andersen. I wanted to write the kind of story that would appeal to children and young adults, 9 to 12 years old, and the young at heart. I decided an animal fairytale would be best. I also wanted a tale with a magical theme and one that had all the enchantment and wonder of a snowy Winter Wonderland.

My idea was to create a modern retelling of Charles Perrault’s, “Little Red Riding Hood,” complete with an endearing shape-shifting Grannie-Can-Do, and a lone wolf at the centre of the tale. Children are far more sophisticated than they were at the time the original tale was written. So, I made the mystery of the wolf more intriguing, and gave more dimension to the central character, “Little Red Riding Hood.” I decided to make this Stella a young, shy teen, about to come of age, gain in confidence, and reach for her dreams. I gave her a loving, supportive family with a helpful brother, Billy, who was close. Their relationship was inspired by siblings I know who stand by each other through thick and thin. Stella and Billy have an almost telepathic empathy between them, and the relationship is real with all the teasing and rivalry that accompanies a deep intimacy and love.

I wrote in a love interest sub-plot, which brings out the protective qualities a good brother has for his sister. This romantic aspect of my book is clean, and suitable for young people, 9 to 12, to read.

My lead characters, Stella and Billy, are three-dimensional and they do have to overcome uncertainties, obstacles and challenges in order to self-actualise. But the whole feel of this action adventure fairytale is energised and positive, with a fast pace, so they are not weighed down by their difficulties, they rise to meet the opportunities in them! I think I drew on my own life, and the challenges I faced as a young woman as inspiration here.

I wished to make a character of the setting for my story; I have always thought that people are part of their environment and that where they live influences, though does not determine, their characters. A challenging wilderness – Alaska – seemed the perfect place to bring out Stella and Billy’s characters, and to make them each, in their own way, heroes in the story. The Wales of my early childhood days influenced my writing – just like Alaska it was wild and untamed, and a fairytale setting, full of enchantment and wonder.

I agree with the great E.B.White who famously said:

“Always be on the lookout for wonder”

For me, snow always takes me back to my imaginings as a child, and to the wonder in nature. It’s with that kind of imagination that I write.

From an early age, I was an outdoorsy kind of girl. I even went horse-riding in the snow. Dog racing is a similar sport. It was easy for me to imagine the up and down motion of the sleds racing through the snow-covered terrain. When you are riding or mushing you can go to places that people can only dream of, and your view of the world is different, depending on whether you are moving at a trot or a gallop, slow or fast, going through woods or climbing up to high terrain.

Back at the converted Welsh mansion, where I grew up in an extended family, we lived with my Gran in the top floor flat, we always had snow in winter. The flat was high, high up, with huge windows, and I had a bird’s eye view of the snow for miles around. I remember being fascinated by snow-filled skies, the gleaming quality of frost on the trees and bushes in the garden, and the powder of a light dusting on the rooftops of the terraces all around. On car rides, the mountains were awe-inspiring with snow on the peaks, the fields were seas of snow, and the waterfalls, magical crystal ice-tunnels. One year, we visited my cousins in Slough. Snow had formed a high wall over the cars, so we were snowed in. It was not difficult for me to imagine Alaska in the snow, and all the kinds of snow the mushers encountered.

Later in life, when I was studying Social Psychology at university, I discovered that The Inuit have an impressive variety of words for different kinds of snow because their survival depends on it. In my tale, the Mushers’ journey involves negotiating unpredictable weather and conditions; a metaphor for the journeys of our lives, where we adapt in order to thrive.

Hans Christian Andersen’s wonderful fairytale descriptions of snow in “The Snow Queen” inspired me to make the scenes, sometimes with powder-like “dust from the cosmos,” and sometimes with high walls of snow, or vast ocean-lakes of snow, sound beautiful. I have always loved travel, and I wrote the story not only with the reader’s eyes at ground level, but also introduced aerial views of the landscape to give the journey dream-like interludes and a panoramic effect. I have always loved traveling by plane, including light aircraft, and this experience came in useful in helping me make the story.

The illustrations, by Michele Bourke, bring out the magical elements of Alaska’s scenery and its wildlife in a wonderful way.

This interview was first published by Readers Magnet.