Fairytale Anthology Release – Author Interview with Corinne Morier

Corinne: I teamed up with twelve other writer friends of mine to release an anthology of fairy tale retellings. We each chose a different fairy tale or myth and put our own spin on it, which I’m really excited about. When I was in college, I took a class where we studied fairy tales, and one of our final assignments for the semester was to adapt a fairy tale and make it our own. I had fun doing that, which is why I’m so excited about this anthology. Back in college, I wanted to rewrite The Little Mermaid for the assignment, but we hadn’t read that one in class and my professor wouldn’t accept it. I chose Sleeping Beauty instead, reserving my Little Mermaid idea for a novel-length adaptation. I wound up writing Sleeping Beauty set in Edo-period Japan (late eighteenth century).

Corinne: I chose to adapt The Goose Girl, which has always been one of my favorite fairy tales. When I was a child, my grandmother gave me a book of fairy tales, and I was really fascinated by The Goose Girl because of the colorful illustrations that accompanied it. I still have that fairy tale book! My retelling is set in an urban, modern-day setting–Avelyn Stevenson is traveling to Los Angeles to meet Marco Conti, a young man with whom she has been exchanging e-mails. Instead of a princess, Avelyn is merely a rich girl, and the horse in the original tale, named Falada, has become a human boy named Felix in my adaptation.

Elise: It sounds great! So,what else are you up to in your writing life?
Corinne: Aside from this project, I have five novels in the works, and I rotate among them when I get bored. I have the first book in what I hope will be a high fantasy trilogy, which is a finished first draft that I now need to edit and polish up. I also have Book Two in the trilogy, which is almost finished but needs a bit of work. I’ve also got my Little Mermaid novel-length adaptation, which is not yet a finished first draft but is very close–about 85% finished. I’ve got another high fantasy novel about a princess from a lost kingdom–that one is the farthest from finished out of all of them. I still have over half of that one to write. And then I have another novel, which is currently in the editing phase, about a girl who goes to Japan to study abroad. It’s not fantasy, but it is young adult, and I hope that my readers have as much fun reading it as I did writing it.

Corinne: Yes, of course. After my visit to Fukushima two years ago, I felt very inspired. My classmates and my professors didn’t speak Japanese, but my professors were both Journalism instructors, and my classmates were all Journalism majors. They had all been trained in news reporting, especially as it concerned survivors of a natural disaster. I knew how to speak Japanese, but I wanted to produce something of equal caliber to my friends’ stories, so I decided to put a spin on it using my background in creative writing. I decided to write a novel based on our trip, about a girl who goes to Japan to study abroad. She develops an interest in the Great East Japan Earthquake, especially when she discovers that her host family also carries scars from the disaster–her host brother’s birthday is on March 11, and he was late picking up his little sister, and as a result, she died in the earthquake, so her host parents and host brother all have their own baggage from that day. I wrote the first draft before I even knew I was going to be able to live here in Japan, but since arriving, I have used my own experiences (such as culture shock and homesickness) to add more of an authentic feel to the story. If anyone is interested in learning more about the Great East Japan Earthquake or our project, please feel free to visit our website.

Elise: How long have you been a writer?
Corinne: Been a writer? Ever since I could talk. I remember being maybe six or seven and making up little stories as I went about my day, like when I went to my swimming class, why the light was refracted in the pool a certain way, or stories starring the toy cars I had at the time. When I was in the first grade, I wrote a story about me and my friends going in a rocket ship and flying to the moon. But if we’re talking more of “Known that I wanted to pursue it as a career,” that would be about halfway through my freshman year of high school, right after I participated in the school production of Hamlet. A few days after we wrapped, I was suffering from the depression that always follows a huge event with a ton of buildup, so I wrote my own version of Hamlet. And I had such fun doing that and creating my own story that I decided I wanted to write for a living, although for a few years after that, I wanted to be a movie director rather than a novelist. My decision to be a novelist came later, during my senior year of high school.

Corinne: Oh, yes. I would really recommend Eve: The Awakening by Jenna Moreci. Eve is a chimera, a more evolved form of human with psychic powers. All she wants is to start over with a blank slate at Billington University, the most prestigious university in California, but when chimeras are being hunted to extinction by aliens for unknown reasons, she’ll have to fight to rescue her friends and herself. It’s a gripping, thrilling NA science-fiction read that grabs you from page one and doesn’t let you go again until you’ve reached “The End.” Because of mature content, I would not recommend it to anyone under the age of sixteen, but I couldn’t put it down and it’s definitely a must-read.

Also The Heart of the Winterland by Kristen Kooistra, which is a kid-friendly novel with a fairy-tale feel. Cali is the princess of Trabor, a snowbound kingdom with her as its lone inhabitant. Her only companion is Voice, a magical guardian enchanted to look after her every need. On her 200th birthday, she sets out on an adventure to discover the land beyond her own kingdom and why she is all alone in a world of snow.

For your younger readers, Heart of the Winterland is a book worth reading, and for your older readers who don’t mind a bit of bloodshed and swearing, Eve: The Awakening is a gripping adventure.

Elise: Great! I’ve read Winterland and agree with you. I will have to check out Eve some time. And now for a quick-fire round to finish off. What’s your favourite…..

Quite busy.

Thanks for stopping by, Corinne!

Corinne Morier is a fantasy author with a penchant for writing stories that make readers feel. When she’s not writing her own stories or pestering her writer friends to hurry up and finish their books, you can usually find her playing video games, watching anime, or swimming. Her paranormal flash story The Photo was published by Roane Publishing, and her short story Mother’s Gift is available in the Just-Us League Anthology. She chose to adapt this fairy tale because it has been one of her favorite fairy tales ever since she was a child.