Reimaging fairytales is nothing new. In fact, I’d argue that every time a fairytale was told around a campfire or to children trying to fall asleep, the storyteller would add embellishments. Fairytales’ very timelessness lends to the endless possibilities. The only limitation is your own imagination. After all, authors have been taking these stories and adding twists and layers since the first fairytale was told over a thousand years ago.

My favorite fairy tale is Beauty and the Beast. The classic story as we know was first published in 1757, although it is derived, like most fairytales, from folklore passed orally from generation to generation. Folktales transcend time and culture. For example, Cinderella was first recorded in China around 850-860.

A Brazen Bargain, my fairy tale twist, certainly has elements of Beauty and the Beast. The mind-boggling thing for me is that I didn’t set out to write a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. The first book in the Spies and Lovers series, An Indecent Invitation, is more a nod to great male/female spy pairings like Mr. and Mrs. Smith or Knight and Day.

Before A Brazen Bargain found a home, I entered it in several contests, including the Golden Heart®, in which it finaled in 2014. One contest judge commented she enjoyed my take on the classic Beauty and the Beast tale. I shook my head in confusion…until I realized that’s exactly what I had written.

My hero is physically and emotionally scarred from his last mission for the Crown during the Napoleonic Wars. He certainly considers himself a Beast. While not a complete hermit, he’s more at ease on his country estate with his life-long servants. My heroine is forced to spend three months on my hero’s isolated estate working off a debt (incurred by her brother in my version.)

Slowly, my beautiful, headstrong heroine comes to love my beastly hero. I even made my hero a lover of classic fairytales himself. Grimm’s Fairytales and Arabian Nights make an appearance in A Brazen Bargain. And, perhaps most tellingly, my subconscious named my hero’s cook Mrs. Potts! (Although, there is no little boy named Chip 🙂 )

To me this speaks to the way fairytales have worked their way deep into the fiber of who we are. They are fundamental tales.

This small interchange between my hero and heroine (who, it should be noted, is drunk as a wheelbarrow here) sums up the difference in how he sees himself and how she’s come to view him…

“You bloody, no-good bastard. Why do you have to be so disgustingly…” Minerva paused as if searching for the right epitaph. She rubbed a hand over her forehead.

Rafe froze and waited for the stab of her words. So disgustingly…ugly? Grotesque? Hideous?

Minerva snapped her fingers. “Masculine. I mean look at you with your bulging muscles and chest and your hands… Dear God, your hands.”

---

Do you have a favorite romance that gives a nod to a fairytale or perhaps a favorite fairytale you’d like to see twisted into a new tale?

If you love Beauty and the Beast as I do, here are a few other books that I recommend:

Beauty by Robin McKinley. A classic in and of itself, this retelling stays true to the original except that “Beauty” is actually a rather awkward, endearing heroine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beauty and the Rake by Erica Monroe. Looking for a dark, gritty twist on the classic tale?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Perils of Pursuing a Prince by Julia London. Set in Regency Wales, this delightful book is one of my favorites.

For more information on the history of various fairytales visit SurLaLunefairytales.com.

---

Laura Trentham was born and raised in a small town in Northwest Tennessee. Although, she loved English and reading in high school, she majored in Chemical Engineering (in order to avoid becoming a starving artist!) and worked in a hard hat and steel toed boots for several years.

She is the author of sexy, small town contemporaries and smoking hot Regency historicals. The first two books of her Falcon Football series were named Top Picks by RT Book Reviews magazine. When not lost in a cozy Southern town or Regency England, she’s shuttling her kids to soccer, helping with homework, and avoiding the Mt. Everest-sized pile of laundry in her room that is almost as large as the TBR pile of books on her nightstand.