This blog post is coming to you one day early, because Timeless 2 releases today! 😀

Timeless 2 is an anthology of fairy tale retellings from Dragon Soul Press. You can find it here. To celebrate its release, several of the authors had decided to interview each other. Here are my answers to the interview prompts below; later in the week, I’ll link the others’ as well!

1: Introduce Yourself

Hi! I’m an avid writer and reader whose daily responsibilities include Tortoise Caretaker, Cat Mom, and Suburban Forest Guardian (okay, technically my day job title is “Education and Outreach Coordinator,” but all that coordination is in service of a local watershed and small forest). As Elle Hartford, I write fairytale-inspired cozy mysteries. What are those, you ask? Well, here’s a good example . . .

2: Introduce Your Story

Imagine if “Cinderella” was from the fairy godmother’s point of view — and Cinderella herself was about to take matters into her own hands. Set that story in a cozy fairytale town, and you have “The Alchemical Godmother.” Instead of a fairy we have Red (yes, like “Little Red Riding Hood,” except my Red is more interested in science than in talking to strangers in the woods), who gets herself into more trouble than she’d expected by promising to help a neighbor solve a crime.

Red and her friends are part of a continuing series I’m working on. Actually, this retelling of Cinderella was one of the first mysteries I wrote with Red, and when I stumbled across Dragon Soul Press’s call for retold fairy tales I knew I had to polish up the story and send it in.

3. Favorite Fairy Tale Retelling

Ack, what a hard question! I grew up devouring novels from the “Once Upon a Time” series, especially ones written by Cameron Dokey (Beauty Sleep was one of my favorites). On the mystery side of things, I also have to shout out Maia Chance’s “Fairy Tale Fatal” series, which puts themes of mystery and myth in a Victorian setting.

4. Tell Us Something Interesting About Your Writing!

Long-time blog readers will know that I pull information (and inspiration!) for my writing from many different places, including an ever-growing personal library on everything from botany to mermaids and history of science to uses of myth. But I also love mining https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/folktexts.html for different versions of fairy tales. In fact, I’ll probably do a blog post about all the different varieties of Cinderella next week!

5. What’s Next?

Well, for folks who first encounter Red and her friends in “The Alchemical Godmother,” there’s a whole world ahead of you! My series of short stories, The Carousel Capers — which is currently coming out one story at a time in my newsletter — takes place after the “Godmother” story, and sees Red becoming more familiar with her new home. And after that, there’s a series of mystery novels waiting in the wings.

And that answers what’s next for me as well as for Red! My first novel set in her world, tentatively titled Beauty and the Alchemist, is almost ready to be released. I’m already hard at work on its sequels, and on writing more short stories. So stay tuned for more news soon. 🙂

And again, you can find Timeless 2 here — check out “The Alchemical Godmother” and other awesome stories as well!