Today's retelling author is new-to-me, but her books look so creative and fun! I'm happy to get to know more about her with you!
Meet Rachel...
Born
only a few miles from where Jesse James robbed his first train, Rachel Kovaciny
has loved westerns all her life. She
says they’re where her imagination feels most at home. Rachel is a Christian wife and mother who
homeschools her children. In her spare
time, she retells fairy tales as westerns and writes a column to the Prairie Times as well as contributing
regularly to the online magazine Femnista.
Rachel
Kovaciny’s first stand-alone western, Cloaked,
debuted in 2017 and was a Peacemaker Award finalist for Best YA/Children’s
Western Fiction.
Rachel's Retelling...
Twelve Dancing Princesses…
re-imagined.
Fifty
dollars just for asking a few questions? Jedediah Jones figures it must be his
lucky day. What dancing and doughnuts have to do with anything, he neither
knows nor cares. He’s only interested in earning that money so he can finally
eat something other than the apples he’s been living off for days. Once his
stomach and his pockets are filled again, he plans to move on.
But
answering the advertisement plunges him into a forest of painted trees, twelve
pretty sisters, trouble, and more trouble. And, yes, doughnuts.
So
many doughnuts.
Can
Jedediah Jones solve the mystery and earn that fifty dollars when the whole
town has failed? Or will the twelve sisters lose their family’s business no
matter what he does?
Behind the Retellings
A note from Rachel...
Thanks
for having me here today!
Somewhere
around 2012, I got the idea of retelling fairy tales as westerns, but it stayed
just an idea I kicked around a while until 2015, when I decided to enter a
contest from Rooglewood Press focused around retellings of “Sleeping
Beauty.” My entry, “The Man on the
Buckskin Horse,” was one of five winners which were then published in the
anthology Five Magic Spindles in
2016. Encouraged by that success, I next
retold “Little Red Riding Hood” as a western, which became my book Cloaked.
I followed that up with Dancing
and Doughnuts, which retells “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.”
That
initial idea for retelling a fairy tale as a western was sparked by reading a picture book version of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” to my small
children. It’s long been one of my
absolute favorite fairy tales, and it struck me one day that the former soldier
in the fairy tale could easily be translated into a Civil War veteran. I love the frolicsome feel of this particular
story, and tried to capture that in my book.
Although the characters are faced with problems, they’re not in any kind
of life-or-death danger, unlike my previous retellings. That made Dancing
and Doughnuts especially fun to write.
I also had a good time trying out many doughnut recipes from the 1800s
until I could find one that matched the ones in the book fairly well. My husband says this is the kind of research
he’s especially fond of.
I
love studying history, so much so that I kind of accidentally got a history
minor when I was in college. I kept
taking history classes for fun whenever I had an empty spot in my class schedule,
and I accumulated so many that I qualified for a minor without meaning to. I also love reading historical fiction
because seeing how people lived in times gone by helps me understand and
appreciate my own life in new ways. So
writing historical fiction myself is something of an obvious choice. I truly enjoy things like doing the research
to get everyday details correct, studying the history of the west to find the
right place to set a story, and checking on the etymology of words so I don’t
use a word in a character’s dialog or thoughts that isn’t period-correct. Those might be boring for another writer, but
for me, they’re a joy.
I’ve
loved western movies since I was a toddler myself – I grew up watching the
westerns of John Wayne and James Stewart and their contemporaries. I also very much enjoyed what I called “cowboy
books” when I was a kid, and I want to bring that same pleasure to today’s
readers. I think that fairy tales and
westerns are a natural fit for each other because westerns are America’s
mythology.
My
books do not have to be read in a particular order because they don’t tell one
continuous story the way some book series do.
Instead, I call Once Upon a Western an anthology series because each
book stands on its own, but they all take place in a shared universe. The characters from these first two books may
show up again in later books in some capacity.
And I’m gradually writing and releasing short stories that expand the
universe and will eventually help to connect the novels more too. So far, I’ve released two, which are
available for free for Kindle, Nook, and Kobo.
“No Match for a Good Story” is based on the story of Scheherezade and is
a follow-up to “The Man on the Buckskin Horse,” and “Blizzard at Three Bears
Lake” retells “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” and is a follow-up to Cloaked.
This month, I’m releasing a new short story called “Gruff” that also
follows Cloaked. I think you can probably guess what fairy
tale it revolves around.
I’m
currently retelling “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” as a western called One Bad Apple. It features seven white orphans who get taken
in by a wagon train of former slaves, only to discover that one member of that
wagon train is a very dangerous woman with deadly intentions toward her stepdaughter. I’m in the process of revising One Bad Apple, and it should be released
in early 2020.
3 comments:
Thanks for including me in this series, Amanda!
This looks interesting. Twelve Dancing Princesses is my favorite fairytale!
I haven't heard of this one before. Adding it to my TBR!
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