[kaldaka]

I did a quick search on this subject and nothing came up, so I figured I'd go ahead and start a thread on this. One of my current WIP's (on hold during Nov. as everything else is) is a fantasy fairy tale. What I'm curious about is what other people think about them. Is it boring and repetitive to rewrite a fairy tale? Do you approve of it or hate it?

I know there are some really good ones out there- Robin McKinley's two Beauty and the Beast retellings are amazing ('Beauty' (http://www.amazon.com/Beauty-Robin-McKinley/dp/0385604807/ref=sr_1_2/104-7579294-8961516?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194870900&sr=8-2)and 'Rose Daughter' (http://www.amazon.com/Rose-Daughter-Robin-McKinley/dp/0441005837/ref=sr_1_1/104-7579294-8961516?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194870989&sr=1-1))- but is anybody else on here writing fairy tales with a fantasy twist?

[KatG]

It was something that a lot of authors were playing with in the 1980's and there were several good anthologies on fairy tales. McKinley and Terri Windling were well known for them.

Nowadays, you're more likely to see it in short fiction, though there is Gregory Macguire's take on Cinderella and the Wizard of Oz. There's also Jason Fforde's nursery rhyme mystery series. My favorite, though, is probably the short satirical novel, Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming, by Roger Zelany and Robert Sheckley, which was awhile back. There's still clearly lots of room for it in the field.

[Michael B]

but is anybody else on here writing fairy tales with a fantasy twist?
I wouldn't take an existing plot in any genre without trying to give it a new twist, if possible diametrically opposite. I like trying to answer propositions like what would happen if the good guys had lost, a key character survives instead of dying or is not quite so stupid after all. In that respect fairy tales are as good material as any other story.

[Expendable]

John Moore has written a few books as twists of various fairy tales. The Unhandsome Prince and Slay and Rescue leaps to mind.

[Teresa Edgerton]

Dennis McKiernan and Mercedes Lackey have each been rewriting fairy tales recently. Whether their fans are eating these up because they like reinterpreted fairy tales or because they like McKiernan and Lackey, I couldn't say.

Tanith Lee's White as Snow, which was published as part of the Fairy Tale series edited by Terri Windling for Tor, came out in 2000, but I don't think there has been anything else in that series since.