Hey friends! Today is the LAST day of the Magic Mirror blog tour and book launch! Have you entered our Rafflecopter contest to win five paperback versions of these Snow White retellings? (Just scroll to the bottom of the page at this link to enter!)
Today I have the multi-talented Kendra E. Ardnek with me (she’s the brains behind this book launch and blog hop, as well as the designer of all but one of the covers in our collection!). She’s sharing about her character Jeremy, from the second of two of her Snow White retellings that are part of this collection. The Seven Drawers: A Tale of Snow White is a modern day twist on the famous fairytale!
Take it away, Kendra!
Prince Charming is probably the most difficult character to deal with in retellings of Snow White. After all, his only role in the fairy tale is to find a corpse in the woods, convince the men grieving for her that he needed to take the body because it was so beautiful … and then she wakes up and he’s like “Oh, guess this means I’ll marry her!”
So, when it came to creating Gwen’s love interest, I knew I needed a different approach. My solution – have him be her long-term boyfriend of six years. Who’s gone into radio silence after her father died and her stepmother kicked her out of the house.
I wasn’t going to have him actually show up in the book until the close of the book, but then I wrote chapter 2, involving his alternate version in that realm playing the part of the huntsman … and he just insisted on barging in and being part of the story from there out.
Jeremy was such a fun character to write. Messy brown hair, mischief dancing in his brown eyes, he was head-over-heels for Gwen, and she adored him – which is why it was so strange that he should just break it off without warning. Especially when she’d just lost everything else!
There’s … not really much else I can say about him that’s not a spoiler, beyond the fact that they met in the library when she was thirteen …
Oh, I do have something else. His name. I’m … not actually sure why I named him Jeremy, ’cause it’s actually one of my least-favorite names due to having a cousin by the name who trapped me in my turtle sandbox when I was four and also teased me for eating sand. (We … will not discuss the fact that I was eating sand. I was a weird child. And maybe he had a point.)
Anywho, do read the book so you can find out more about him and his awesomeness.
Pssst! You can start by reading the first chapter on Kendra’s blog, here at this link!
Do you like modern day (or futuristic) retellings of old tales? Why or why not?
About The Seven Drawers (now available from Amazon):
Gwen’s life has been absolute misery for the last two months. Her father died, she was written out of the will, her stepmother kicked her out of the house, and, in that time, she’s not heard a word from her boyfriend of five years.
And she might be suffering from insanity. A chest of drawers just appeared at the foot of her bed, and as she opens each drawer, she’s spirited away to another realm where she finds herself in increasingly bizarre prisons, each the fault of her stepmother.
Can she win back her life – and kingdoms? – from her stepmother? Or will Editha win?
Kendra E. Ardnek has been writing her own stories since she was a toddler. She fell in love with books, drama, and fairy tales at a very young age – and has been filling notebooks with her stories for years. Joining NaNoWriMo gave her an opportunity to be a published author at 16.
