At first, I wasn't going to give any background info on why I wrote Asleep In Eden, but it's been a week since then and I decided some sort of introduction would be good. (Even if I've already posted the first part of the story.) (Oops/Sorry.)
I really love it when writers take old fairy tales and rework them into something that is new and fresh. That was my goal with Asleep In Eden. It's based on the fairy tale I could never bring myself to like, Sleeping Beauty.
In case you're wondering what in the world I was thinking when I picked my least favorite fairy tale to rewrite, I'll tell you. I dislike Sleeping Beauty for many of the reasons that also made me think it would be the most challenging story to rewrite. And I love me a good challenge.
When I stared working on it, I had a lots of issues with the story itself. I couldn't understand why the evil fairy would quit harassing Sleeping Beauty if she knew that Sleeping Beauty got a happy ending. I knew wanted Sleeping Beauty (or Jane, in my case) to be the main character, and I wanted to see if I could make her interesting. This presented the hardest part of the story (and one reason I dislike the fairy tale): My main character was literally going to be sleeping through most of her own story. (Talk about lazy, seriously. Shame on you.) I didn't want to go against anything that the original story had explicitly said. But I knew that if I wanted let Jane catnap and take also an active part in the story, she would to have to be two places at once.
So finally, I let her do just that. Asleep In Eden is the story of Jane Carver (aka Sleeping Beauty) and her final days in a very long out-of-body experience.
That is my premise for Asleep In Eden, and how I arrived at it. The actual text is about 30 pages long and divided up into five parts. I will be posting the entire story over five weeks total. (In other words, the story will be finished three weeks from now, by which time I hope to have written something else worth posting.)
All of that being said, I'm due to post Part Two this weekend.. If you feel like reading it, I leave this link at your disposal.
Asleep In Eden, Part Two
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