Kaylin Lee | YA Fantasy Author

Next up in our fairy tale author interview series…Nina Clare!

Nina is the author of five fairy tale retellings, beginning with The Swan King. She lives in rural Cornwall, England and had some very fun answers to my interview questions.

Also, keep an eye out for her great advice for would-be writers!

Here’s the blurb for her historical fairy tale The Swan King. Sounds so intriguing, doesn’t it?

The Swan King by Nina Clare

Elsa, the sheltered daughter of a baron, has been forced to flee her home. When she’s given refuge at the royal castle it would seem that help is at hand, but the young king is not an easy man to speak to. In fact, Elsa’s not sure what kind of man he is.

Caught up into strange and magical happenings, political intrigues and romantic conflicts, the glamorous world of the king disintegrates about her, and enemies close in. Elsa wonders who to trust, who to love, and if she will ever make it home again.

Amazon

Now for the interview…

Your fairy godmother gives you an extra, distraction-free hour every day but you’re not allowed to use it to write. What do you do with your extra hour?

Aww, thanks, Fairy Godmother! So, you did hear all the times I’ve said “I wish I had time to get back into painting”. I’ve always painted and crafted since I can remember, but writing absorbs all my creative time at present, and I’d love to find time for art again, it’s so relaxing.

P.S. Fairy Godmother, do you think you could throw in a little studio space? Just a dinky room will do with some natural light…an iPod dock, a teapot…

What fairy tale sidekick do you need in your life?

I need a talking unicorn. With wings. No road tax, no traffic, and we can chat about all things unicorny. I have so many questions.

What’s your Enneagram number? How does it show up in your author life?

5w4 which I think is a useful combo for a writer – my 5 core makes me a keen reader, researcher and observer, while my 4 wing is my creative side and adores all things metaphorical and abstract, hence my love of myth and fantasy. Studying the Enneagram is a wonderful tool for thinking about character creation in writing, as well as for personal development, I love it for both of those things.

Do you have a consistent writing routine? What’s it like?

I have to write first-draft stuff early in the morning before anyone else is up. It’s just me and the snoozy dogs. I sit by a window, and for six months of the year it’s completely dark outside while I write, but I quite like that, it makes me feel cozy and secreted away in my writing den.

Current writing music:

I can’t listen to music when I’m writing, I need either silence or I’ll play heavy rain through headphones. But after my morning writing session, I head out for a walk with the dogs, and then I listen to music while I think about what my next scene will be. Current playlist is Sleeping at Last for thoughtful moods, and this summer it’s been the latest albums from Switchfoot and Tobymac for some fun, high-energy vibes.

P.P.S Fairy Godmother – I wish I could write prose the way Sleeping at Last (Ryan O Neil) crafts and sings his songs. Can that go on the list?

What’s your go-to beverage while writing?

A big mug of fresh coffee first thing in the morning. I get my beans from Karanu Coffee – they buy them from tiny farms around the world, and all the profit goes to charity. This month they sent me Peaberry Minaja beans from Tanzania – sooo good! For the rest of the day it’s peppermint tea.

If you weren’t writing fairy tale retellings, what genre would you be writing?

It would have to be historical fiction, I have a hard time keeping my head in the present day, so I don’t feel much drawn to contemporary fiction, either to read or write it, the past always seems much more interesting.

What is the craziest (or most fun) thing you have done as research for your novels?

I went to Munich for a few days last year to visit Ludwig II’s castles and palaces. It was research for The Swan King. I wish I could go back and do the trip all over again! Bavaria is beautiful, full of fairy tale castles and adorable pastries, and they play Mozart in the tube stations.

What advice would you give to your just-starting-out-writing self?

Study story structure sooner, and establish a dailywriting routine. I took lots of creative writing courses with the Open University years ago, but no one ever taught me about story structure – it was a revelation when I discovered it (K M Weiland and Jessica Brodie have been the most helpful teachers so far).

What advice would you give to someone who wants to become a writer?

As above, but also read as much as you can. Decide what genre you want to write in, it will usually be the one you most love reading. Know your own genre tropes inside out, but read widely in fiction and nonfiction to expose yourself to lots of different writing styles and ideas and language. And don’t compare yourself to anyone else. You can only write like you.

Describe your approach to fairy tale retelling. How you decide where and how to twist the original or keep it as is?

The stories I choose are the ones where there is something intriguing, that makes me want to explore it further or change the outcome in some way.

In my 12 Dancing Princesses story, The Thirteenth Princess, I was intrigued by who the princes were in the underground world. The original tale doesn’t tell us. Were they real men, and if so, how did they get there? What happened to them after the princess’s nocturnal mystery was solved? That was the idea that started me off on my story.

In my Rumpelstiltskin retelling, The Miller’s Girl, I just could not stomach the miller’s girl marrying the greedy old king who’d threatened to kill her! I just had to explore an alternative story for her.

In The Reluctant Wife, my King Thrushbeard story, I wanted to explore why such a nice chap as the young king would go to such lengths for a spoilt princess. And I thought it would be fun to write a heroine behaving badly, which it was!

The Swan King and Beck are not direct fairy tale retellings but a mix of history, legend and folklore reworked into fairy tales. The Swan King was inspired by King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who was visionary and a great patron of the arts, but too lost in his own fantasy world to be the king his government wanted. His real-life ending was tragic, and I wanted to give him a happy ending.

Beck is set against the background of the tumultuous period of Richard III and Henry VII, and the white slavery trade of that era. It was a time when Corsa pirates would sail down the coastlines of Europe, including Cornwall, where I live, literally snatching people from villages and taking them back to North Africa to sell into slavery. I mixed these historical details up with an old Scottish balled called Young Beichan, and Beck was the hybrid result of history and folklore.

How did you come up with your fairy tale fantasy world? What details were the most fun to write about?

I draw on history for my worldbuilding. I pick a period in history and a country, and use that as my starting point. But the most fun thing about fantasy is you can embellish and change things round, it’s not as strict as pure historical fiction where you have to try and keep everything correct to the period.

P.P.P.S Fairy Godmother – could my flying unicorn be time-travelling? It would be really helpful for research purposes. (you’re the best!)

Share a writer meme that made you laugh recently:

I love this little meme chart, it’s very appropriate for the writing life.

Connect with Nina on her website and get a free fairy tale novella if you sign up for her email list there. You can also find her on Instagram and Facebook.

Have you ever finished a great novel and wanted to know more about the person who wrote it? I mean beyond the little bio on Amazon or their website? Personally, I love hearing the nitty gritty details of author life, routines, and more, so I thought it’d be fun to interview other fairy tale authors for this blog. That way we can nerd out AND get book recommendations at the same time. Win-win!! 😉

We’re kicking off the series with an interview with author Tricia Mingerink. Hi Tricia! Tricia is the author of two book series, The Blades of Acktar and Beyond the Tales. Beyond the Tales is a new fairy tale series with two books out so far. Aaaand she has her own fairy tale sidekick – Hi Shadow!

Book 1 in Beyond the Tales is called Midnight’s Curse. I’m a few chapters in and loving it so far! Here’s the blurb:

Dagger’s Sleep (Beyond the Tales, Book One)

A prince cursed to sleep.
A princess destined to wake him.
A kingdom determined to stop them.

High Prince Alexander has been cursed to a sleep like unto death, a curse that will end the line of the high kings and send the Seven Kingdoms of Tallahatchia into chaos. With his manservant to carry his luggage and his own superior intelligence to aid him, Alex sets off to find one of the Fae and end his curse one way or another.

A hundred years later, Princess Rosanna learns she is the princess destined by the Highest King to wake the legendary sleeping prince. With the help of the mysterious Daemyn Rand, can she find the courage to finish the quest as Tallahatchia wavers on the edge of war?

One curse connects them. A hundred years separate them. From the rushing rivers of Tallahatchia’s mountains to the hall of the Highest King himself, their quests will demand greater sacrifice than either of them could imagine.

2019 Realm Award Finalist – Fantasy

Amazon | Goodreads

It’s Interview Time!

So Tricia…what life experience do you think has had the biggest impact on your writing life?

My family went on a lot of road trips while I was growing up. We never visited places like Disney world or other amusement parks. We focused on historical places, like Gettysburg, or national parks. I developed a love of road trips and have traveled across 47 of the 50 states in the United States.

All that road tripping and hiking in a variety of landscapes has influenced the settings of my books. I tend to think of them as “American” fantasy, since I have based all my settings on the geography in various places in the United States. In Beyond the Tales, my fairy tale retelling series, my fantasy kingdom of Tallahatchia is loosely based on the Appalachian Mountain region (if you tossed a few castles into the mountains).

What was your inciting incident as an author? Share the moment or catalyst that made you say, “Okay, I’m doing it. I’m going to write a novel.”

I started drawing picture books when I was two years old, telling stories about a family of talking horses. When I was 6, my family visited Mansfield in Missouri, which is where Laura Ingalls Wilder spent the last decades of her life and where she wrote the Little House books. I very clearly remember standing in front of the desk where she wrote her books and deciding that, yep, I was going to be a published author someday. It only took me 19 years, but I eventually did it.

What fairy tale sidekick do you need in your life?

I actually have my fairy tale sidekick already! I have a big white horse named Shadow who is the spitting image of Maximus from Tangled, complete with a love of apples. Shadow loves to show off, and he adores children (mostly because they always feed him lots of treats and properly adore him as he rightly deserves).

What’s your Myers-Briggs personality type? How does it show up in your author life?

I am an INTJ with a few INFJ tendencies. For my author life, it means I am very self-disciplined, and I love to set deadlines for myself (and ruthlessly make myself meet those deadlines). I am also great at writing stoic guy characters, but I need my early readers’ help in making my female characters feel real. Not a problem I should have, given I’m a girl. *shrugs* Apparently INTJ is the rarest personality type, and even rarer in women. So I guess I should feel honored?

What’s your go-to beverage while writing?

Mountain Dew. I know. Not a healthy habit. But I have yet to find a coffee or tea that actually tastes good to me.

What other genres do you write in?

I also write Kingdom Adventure, which is nonmagical fantasy with no fantasy creatures or anything that doesn’t exist in our world, yet the kingdom and world itself is made up. It’s a very small, niche genre.

What is the craziest (or most fun) thing you have done as research for your novels?

I once washed my own mouth out with soap. I was the kind of sweet, innocent girl who never had my mouth washed out with soap, so when I was writing a character who washes out his own mouth, I knew I would need to experience it myself. It honestly wasn’t as bad as I was expecting, though the soap taste ends up filling your mouth and nose for a LONG time afterwards.

Describe the premise of your fairy tale series or one of your novels using only pop culture references:

The Beyond the Tales series is a mash up of Disney’s Pocahontas meets a Disney princess movie meets the old Davy Crockett TV shows, complete with keelboats and river pirates.

Describe your approach to fairy tale retelling. How you decide where and how to twist the original or keep it as is?

My favorite approach is to spin the stories so that they examine the themes from a different direction. Much of the fairy tale remains recognizable, but the setting is unique and a few major elements are changed.

For Dagger’s Sleep, my Sleeping Beauty retelling, I decided it would be fun to see what would happen if the prince was the one cursed to sleep. For Midnight’s Curse, my Cinderella retelling, I played around with the idea of insta-love and true love and figuring out why the prince searched for her the way he did.

How did you come up with your fairy tale fantasy world? What details were the most fun to write about?

I wanted a fairy tale world that wasn’t the stereotypical, medieval European world, as much as I love reading fairy tales set in those type of worlds. As mentioned earlier, I settled on the Appalachian Mountain area, but a medieval meets Appalachia version. I ended up with a world where people live in castles but also travel by canoes and wear buckskin. It’s a crazy blend, that’s for sure.

Are there any “Easter eggs” in your books that readers should keep an eye out for?

Midnight’s Curse especially has a lot of subtle “Easter Eggs.” There is a line that is based on something from Romeo and Juliet. Small references to the Once Upon a Time TV series. Some nods to the Princess Bride. And, of course, nods to the original fairy tale.  

Want to connect with Tricia? Here are her website, blog, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram links!

Stay tuned…more author interviews coming soon!