My GIANT Secret...

So I've had this GIANT secret for a while now and until this moment I've been sworn to silence. If any of you know me or have a Facebook page YOU'RE sworn to silence too after you read this... at least until my dad and the extended family has been informed of the afore mentioned secret on Christmas morning and then Sat. Lisa and Laura that's mostly for you since I think you're the only ones I follow on Facebook. Not that I expect you to mention it, but should you, my cousins would see and then they'd tell my aunt and she'd tell my grandmother, and she'd tell my great aunts... you can see where this is going.

So the big secret? My identical twin sister, code name Fenris, is pregnant! It might not be the biggest most amazing most world changing secret, but for us it's pretty awesome. And this little girl (sis's hubby, code name Chucky Duck, already insists it's a girl but we don't know yet) is our immediate family's first grandchild, then for the extended fam it's the first great grandchild, the first niece for all us cousins... and so on and so forth. It's safe to say that as far as my grandmother and her cronies go (they'll find out on Sat when we go up for Christmas) my sister's baby will be our version of Neo. She (he) is THE ONE. The long awaited grandbaby. All the rest of us unmarried, childless cousins will forever be the second-comers now... but that's fine with us. :) The baby is due late June, and I'm sure to post about it again before it gets here. For now it's a Christmas present we get to wait for.

Merry Christmas everyone and have a safe New Year please, my dad doesn't need the business that bad... (for those of you who don't know, dad's a funeral director)

The Christmas Spirit... and all that rot...

I haven't gone shopping once. I haven't eaten anything peppermint flavored. I haven't wrapped one present. I HAVE put up two Christmas trees complete with decorations and lights. My grandmothers and ours. And ours is real so I got to go cut it too! And I've mapped out a plan to spray paint the donkey red and tie a Santa hat on his head. The horses will get wrapped up like Christmas presents. Guaranteed to stop traffic, possibly garner some attention from local law enforcement and, if I'm REALLY lucky, attract PETA's nearest representatives...

My point is that Christmas is not about shopping and presents to me. Yes I grew up flying down the hallway long before the sun even THOUGHT about crawling into the sky and ripping into presents until the living room disappeared beneath wrapping paper. Yes we always wore half of our presents to the grandparents houses and dragged the rest along with us because somehow, once they were opened, we couldn't live if they left our sight for more than twenty minutes. I've survived dinners that would make Chevy Chase faint dead away, and I didn't get paid for the movie rights to them either. I've spent paychecks on family members on occasion, sometimes more than one.

But...

I've also gone Christmas caroling on horseback. Sung ALL the verses to all the OLD Christmas carols. The ones you have to look up in moldy old tomes. Gone horseback riding on Christmas day in fresh snow. Gone sledding on Christmas morning. Cooked Christmas dinner for homeless people. Cooked Christmas dinner and then didn't eat it, but gave it away to someone who just suffered a death in the family and didn't have one for themselves. Bought something and then gave it away before I got home with it. Made all my presents for other people. Baked DOZENS of cookies and then drew goofy pictures on all of the boxes and helped send them to Navy boys on the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt. Got together with my twin sister and took the Christmas themed pictures I posted here so that we could send them with the cookies to the Teddy R. which is the carrier where my brother in law (sister's husband's bro) is serving his country. That was last year, actually. The last year we had with the boys' mom, Charline. Damn you ovarian cancer.

I can tell you what Christmas things I remember the best, which stories get told over and over again, which ones I'm most proud to talk about. And they don't involve things I bought, sales I made or deals I found. They don't involve aunt so and so's best turkey ever, or cousin whoever's camping trip just to be there when the store doors opened and the FiFi the talking hamsters hit the shelves.

No, the best Christmas adventures, mishaps and memories I've ever had involved my family, bonfires with Bear Clan, and cookie capers with my best friend (I'm planning one of those now which will involve a killer recipe for chocolate chip banana nut bread and spiked hot chocolate) and just enjoying the spirit of the year. If I can find it behind all the obnoxious billboards, electronic advertisements and newspaper coupons...

It was a dark and stormy night...

So the crux of this post is retellings of known Fairy tales. Do you like them or not and why?

I ask because I love the idea of taking an already known and loved story and making it your own. After all, verbal histories are vital. And one of the most obvious examples of this is telling stories and legends. My favorite 'classic' Fairy tale is Beauty and the Beast. But even when I was a young child, I hated the ending. I would get so angry when it got right down to the wire and Beauty professed her love to the Beast, only to have the Beast whisked away and replaced by a 'charming' Prince. Charming Princes are well and good in their own right, but I maintain that I prefer the Beast to any 'charming' Prince.

One of my current WIPs is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. I've wanted to write one for years even assuming that it would never get published. Then recently Malinda Lo turned me on to two retellings of Beauty and the Beast by Robin McKinley, Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast, and Rose Daughter.

Let me digress and devote a moment to squeeing over Malinda Lo! She's the author of Ash a retelling of Cinderella. It is a totally awesome book, squee squee squee. But beyond the squee, Ash is beautifully written and one of the best reads I've had all year. By the end of the book I was in an utter state of madness over what might happen to the three main characters. I was SPASTIC. It was wonderful. I've seldom been so torn between characters and possible outcomes. Ash is a finalist for the William C. Morris YA Debut Award. Rock on Malinda Lo!

But back to retellings. After Ms Lo so kindly directed me to Robin Mckinley's retelling works based on Beauty and the Beast, I immediately read them both. I WANTED to like Beauty: A Retelling, especially because it's written in first person, which was something totally new. However, it so closely followed the original Fairy tale that I failed to get attached to the book at all. Rose Daughter on the other hand (and Ms Lo had said it was her favorite of the two) was a well done, unique version of the tale. Beauty isn't all that beautiful. Her sisters aren't awful at all, although they don't spend much time thinking about anyone but themselves at least to start with. And the Beast is wonderful in a beastly way. Then ending is perfect. I loved it.

There are many retellings of Fairy tales out there. But what makes them work, and what makes them fail? For me, there has to be a distinct difference in the retelling from the original, but it can't stray so far that calling it a retelling is a stretch. At the risk of getting thrashed by someone, I'll use Anne Rice's The Taking of Sleeping Beauty for an example of didn't work. Besides the fact that the books in that series are smut (I don't mean that derogatorily, that's how it's described, as 'tasteful smut') there is little plot BEYOND the smut factor. I've only read enough of them to be totally ickyfied. Anne Rice is an accomplished writer, and I love many of her books, but the Sleeping Beauty retellings... negative.

In my own retelling of Beauty and the Beast, Thornbriar, Lady Beauty is beautiful but spoilt. Her father is rich and she wants for nothing. Rather than exchanging her life for her fathers, she's betrothed to the Beast (although Beauty's own people presume that the King being a Beast is just a rumor) for a great sum of money. She's married to the Beast from very early on in the story and instead the pivot point is on her willingness to prove her love for him and his country. Accustomed to being admired and getting what she wants, Luminre (Beauty's real name) must grow and learn to take on responsibilities and think of others if she's going to discover how to break the curse that's been cast over her Beast husband and his kingdom.

What about you? What retellings are out there that you like? What ones don't you like? Have you ever written a new take on your favorite Fairy tale?