Carson asked Jane Yolen:

I first would like to congratulate you on having such an incredible career without a bad book in the bunch. You have been my favorite author since I was very young as my mother read me Greyling. My question is about Briar Rose. What was your process in writing this book and how did you decide to go with the beautifully tragic plot it is? Thank you.

Jane Yolen Thank you, Carson. I was sitting with my friend and editor Terri Windling. She had brought out the first couple of books in the series she was editing for Tor--Fairy Tale novels. We had always known I would do one for her. I had my mind set on an Appalachian Cinderella, but she told me she had a problem. One of the authors--Patricia McKillip--had pulled out of a contract to write a Sleeping Beauty story. Could I write one? It was never my favorite story. Princess too passive, in early versions she is raped and awakes a mother of twins. No, I wasn't convinced. I had just published my first novel of the Holocaust, Devil's Arithmetic. I CERTAINLY didn't want to go back there again! And yet as we sat talking about books and stories and the writer's life, I said, did you ever hear of the concentration camp called Chelmno? She shook her head.

In my research for DA, I'd watched the documentary called "Shoah" about several concentration camps from both the points of view of the camp guards and the survivors. It was chilling stuff. I said the camp itself was really a processing plant in a schloss. She looked at me. A castle. Surrounded by barbed wire. Once the Jews were "processed" there, they were put in a truck, the doors locked, and exhaust gas was pumped in so that by the time the truck had driven to the forest outside of town where there were huge burial pits, every one inside had died.

Terri shivered, "Horrible."

"Think of it: castle, briary fence, everyone in the sleep of death. . .:

"Oh my God," she said. "It's Sleeping Beauty."

And then she promised me a contract immediately.

Of course that's not how the book business is run these days. There are endless committee meetings, often 3,4,5 revsions before the book is even contracted for. Endless waits. But that's how this book began.

Jane

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