My favorite story to write is always the story I'm currently writing. But my favorite story to read and to watch and to think about is always Beauty and the Beast, which means that this particular story I’ve written will always be a little special.
When I was a toddler I used to watch the Disney movie every day. So I've been obsessed with Beauty and the Beast for about thirty years now.
At some point in high school I found out that the original novel existed, and after several months of searching was technically able to find it. A PDF scan of the original book in French, printed over 200 years ago. Which meant that not only was it in a language I didn't know, but it was in a slightly older version of a language I didn't know, with a font type that was almost completely unreadable. I spent several months trying and failing to translate.
A couple years later I finally managed to track down an English translation. And it was absolutely worth the wait.
I wrote my first novel length retelling of Beauty and the Beast in high school. It had some elements I remain very proud of. It incorporated a lot of the forgotten elements of the original novel, like the fairy backstories, cultures, and war. It drew a lot on Swiss and French folklore from the Alps, since that was my setting. I had some interesting things going on, and some things I think I handled well. But ultimately it was 60,000 words I wrote over the course of 30 days as a 17 year old, and the majority of it does not seem salvageable. Maybe someday I'll try.
In college I wrote a novella retelling, which I remain pretty happy with, and which you may have encountered if you know my pen name. I also wrote Windows, which may not count as a retelling since it doesn't involve a curse, the breaking of a curse, a romance, or a love interest leaving and coming back, but it's certainly heavily inspired by Beauty and the Beast.
I've planned or started probably half a dozen other BATB retellings, and that's not counting other enchanted bridegroom stories—Lindworm, my planned retelling of East of the Sun West of the Moon, my planned retelling of Snow White and Rose Red, various short stories, etc.
Somehow, no matter where I go, I always land back at Beauty and the Beast.
To Be Loved is exactly the Beauty and the Beast story I wanted to tell, right now. But so were all the others, and I'm sure in the future there'll be more. I always find more things to say, and new ways to say them, when it comes to Beauty and the Beast. I look forward to finding out how the story is going to come out of me the next time. But for now, I'm exceedingly happy with To Be Loved.
I don't want to give a bunch of spoilers (though if you were on Patreon last year you know the majority of the story. But I have added and changed and rearranges several things, too), but I do want to talk a lot about this book that I'm super excited about. So I will try to be careful in my enthusiastic rambling?
I abandoned the complex fairy and family backstories, because they don't have much to do with the main plot and I didn't want to pull my focus from the main plot for a complicated tangent, and because I've already done the complex backstories in my high school novel. I abandoned the complicated relationship with the queen because I wanted to instead have a complicated relationship with a sibling, and because I've already done the queen in my pen name novella.
I abandoned the dream prince because it's complicated and confusing and Mira isn't the sort of person who would fall in love with a dream, or the sort of person who would dream of handsome men loving her, or the sort of person who would even be comfortable with a handsome man loving her. And also because Bram isn't the sort of person who would try to reach out to Mira in a dream to reveal his true self, because he doesn't really think of the handsome prince as his true self.
I abandoned the rose because, as we either have discussed recently or will discuss shortly (I've lost track of where I am on my schedule), the rose is all about getting a young woman on the premises who can break the spell. And—this is the most fundamental part of To Be Loved—Bram doesn't really want the spell to break.
Bram is traumatized and terrified, and the spell may be a curse, but it's also a safety net. As long as he's a monster, not one is going to want him (don't tell Bram about the internet), which means no one is going to try to force themselves on him. And if they do, a Beast can fight back much better than a prince.
To Be Loved is about half basic Beauty and the Beast, and half aftermath, because I love the aftermath of a transformation spell. It's about identity and recovery, and it's just exactly the story I wanted to tell, which feels so good after so many tries at Beauty and the Beast. And I'm so excited for you to read it.
Order my Beauty and the Beast retelling, To Be Loved, at waxheartpress.com!
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