Monstrous Beauty, Page 3
Marie Brennan
Remember, this set happened by accident. I didn’t plan to write seven stories, though after I had written two or three it became clear I was on some kind of roll. And I didn’t plan to write about the monstrous feminine. Some authors can say to themselves “I am going to explore this theme now” and have it turn out well, but I’m not one of them. I was five successful stories and one failed attempt in before I noticed what I’d been doing all along. Nor is there any kind of message I mean to send by writing about this concept—though of course there are all sorts of messages one could pull out of the result, whether I intended to put them there or not. The fact that the set has a theme does not mean I am attempting to preach anything. It is, however, the reason these form a set—the reason I didn’t decide to bundle them in with other short stories to make a larger collection. They belong together, and nothing else I’ve written belongs with them.
That’s it for my general remarks. For commentary on the individual stories, turn the page.
Notes
Notes on “The Snow-White Heart”
Short stories are small enough things that they can spring fully-formed from a single sentence, like Athena from the head of Zeus. This one—which was the fifth of the set to be written—arose from its opening line: “Cut out her heart and bring it to me,” the queen said, and so the huntsman did.
The immediate question, of course, is how the story can continue when the central character is dead from the first line. I could have had it follow the queen from there, focusing on the consequences of her magical cannibalism, but the whole “flesh golem” thing caught my imagination and ran off with it on the spot. Like all the tales in this set, this one was written in a single go: the idea is either there or it isn’t.
“The Snow-White Heart” was originally published in issue #39 of Talebones, in 2009, and recorded in audio format by Pseudopod, Episode 218, 2010.
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Notes on “Footprints”
This was the last of the stories to be written, for a mix of aesthetic and pragmatic reasons. Aesthetically, my brain had stopped producing these kinds of ideas on a regular basis; I would have had to consciously work at it to come up with more. Pragmatically, it was not easy to sell them; editors see a lot of fairy-tale retellings in various modes, and so are rather jaded on the subject. Furthermore, their short length sharply limited the number of markets I could offer them to. Ergo, it didn’t seem like a good idea to put a lot of work into thinking up more stories of a type that wouldn’t easily find a home—certainly not when I had so many story ideas of other sorts knocking at my brain door, asking for some time and attention.
But I couldn’t stop without trying my hand at “Cinderella,” the last of the classic fairy-tale trinity (as established by Disney, anyway). The need for her to leave by midnight suggested the witching hour, which naturally suggested horrible necromancy, and so it went from there.
“Footprints” was originally published in issue #9 of Shroud Magazine, in 2010.
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Notes on “Shadows’ Bride”
Readers who know their European fairy tales well may be familiar with Giambattista Basile’s “Sun, Moon, and Talia,” which is an early variant of the tale more popularly called “Sleeping Beauty.” That version is about as far from the Disney movie as you can get: Talia is raped in her sleep by a passing king and gives birth to twins (Sun and Moon), not waking until one of the infants sucks on her finger and pulls out the splinter of flax that put her to sleep.
Basile’s tale is horrific enough all on its own. That, however, did not stop me from taking it one step further. (A writer’s brain is not a nice place.)
“Shadows’ Bride” was the fourth of these stories to be written. An abbreviated version was originally published in Shadow Box, ed. Shayne Jiraiya Cummings and Angela Challis, in 2005; this was a charity ebook anthology consisting of extremely short flash fiction—I believe the limit was 120 words. (I’ve written sentences longer than 120 words.) The original version, which is the one included here, was and is a leisurely 200 words.
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Notes on “Tower in Moonlight”
As I said in the Afterword, when I wrote the first of these stories, I thought it was a one-off thing. Like conspiracy theory and fanfiction, however, this mode of writing turned out to be a set of lenses through which I could look at familiar things and see them in a new light. That first story spawned “Tower in Moonlight,” which then spawned more in turn.
This one was partially inspired by personal experience. I’ve had long hair since high school—“long” being “mid-back or lower,” and often down to my hips. In the winter, the dry air means my hair becomes infested with static electricity. You know those plastic desk-chair combos you find in schools? During class I would pull my ponytail or braid forward over my shoulder and find the tail end of it reaching for my face of its own accord. I joked that it was a starting premise for a horror movie . . . or, as it turns out, a horror short story.
“Tower in Moonlight” was originally published in issue #6 of Shroud Magazine, in 2009.
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Notes on “The Wood, the Bridge, the House”
This was the first story of the set to be written, and its starting concept was simple: what if the thing Little Red Riding Hood encountered was far worse than a wolf?
As questions go, it isn’t very complicated, and I’m not the first author to ask it. But it opened a door in my head I hadn’t even known was there: a door to a much darker kind of story than I’d written before, and a different style of writing. I found myself structuring my sentences differently, incorporating more description, reaching for more ornate language. I was (and am) a fantasy writer, but I started selling stories to horror magazines.
It didn’t change my writing forever in the sense of causing me to leave behind what I’d previously done. I still wrote all the same kinds of stories as before, in the same kinds of prose. Thanks to this story, though, I also started writing new kinds of things. It added another dimension to my craft.
And so, though I cannot remember who I was talking to when this idea came into being, I would like to thank that person—whoever and wherever they are.
“The Wood, the Bridge, the House” was originally published in issue #9 of Dark Wisdom, in 2006. Prior to that, it won an Honorable Mention in the 2004 Chiaroscuro Short Story Contest.
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Notes on “Kiss of Life”
By the time I wrote this story (the third in the sequence), I knew I was writing a sequence. I had done horrific things to “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Rapunzel;” I started casting my eye about to see what else I could put through that particular grinder. It didn’t take me long to come up with this one: according to my records, I finished it in the same month as “Tower in Moonlight.”
It is, of course, inspired by vampire movies and every story with an eldritch abomination that should not under any circumstances be woken. It’s also influenced by my folklore studies, and the knowledge that fairy tales exist in many variant forms—some nicer than others.
“Kiss of Life” was originally published in Beneath the Surface, ed. Tim Deal, in 2008.
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Notes on “Waiting for Beauty”
My first stab at writing a “Beauty and the Beast” story for this set didn’t work. It was called “Games in the Dark,” and I don’t think I even bothered to revise it; certainly I never submitted it anywhere. I knew before I was even done that I’d taken a wrong turn somewhere.
The problem was that I had made the Beast a monster. While there’s no reason this can’t work in general (and it’s more or less the way the original story goes), on this occasion I had resoundingly failed to make it work—and it didn’t fit with the set regardless. As I said in the Afterword, I finally realized that t
he previous five stories had all been about the monstrous feminine. “Games in the Dark” wasn’t. So I set it aside, asked myself “how can I make Beauty monstrous?,” and tried again.
The result is my favorite of these stories, and also probably the least awful one of the set. (What that says about me is left as an exercise for the reader.) Compared with the rest, Beauty here isn’t so terribly monstrous; she isn’t a flesh golem or pregnant with eldritch abominations or sucking the life out innocent princes. She’s just dead. Arguably the Beast himself is still the monster here, because of his refusal to accept the truth—but in the end, I feel pity for him, which is not generally true of me and monsters.
“Waiting for Beauty” was originally published in issue #39 of Apex Magazine, in 2012; it was also included in The Book of Apex: Volume 4, ed. Lynne M. Thomas, in 2013.
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About Marie Brennan
Marie Brennan is an anthropologist and folklorist who shamelessly pillages her academic fields for material. She most recently misapplied her professors’ hard work to the Onyx Court historical fantasy series (Midnight Never Come, In Ashes Lie, A Star Shall Fall, and With Fate Conspire). She is also the author of the doppelanger duology of Warrior and Witch, the adventure A Natural History of Dragons, and more than forty short stories.
When she’s not obsessing over historical details too minute for anybody but her to care about, she practices shorin-ryu karate and pretends to be other people in role-playing games (which sometimes find their way into her writing).
Other Books by Marie Brennan
Memoirs of Lady Trent
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Onyx Court series
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Doppelganger series
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Wilders series
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