Fairy Tales Gone Naughty Guest Post from Brenna Lyons

Welcome to Day 5 of Book Junkie's Fairy Tales Gone Naughty, today we are celebrating with author Brenna Lyons. I had the honor to review Brenna's latest release Bride Ball a couple of weeks ago (you can read my review here), and I couldn't rave enough about what a great story Brenna created with her adaptation of the old tale Cinderella.

The Story Behind The Story

Urban fairy tales and retold myths are big these days. But why is that so? It’s not just the quest for something new, a tale that hasn’t been told ten times in the last year or so.

Many fantasy lovers cut their teeth on fairy tales and myths, both readers and writers. Have you ever read a fairy tale and just known there was something more going on than the story on the surface? Have you ever read myths that fell into a timeline with each other and known there was a cause and effect that led the characters from myth A to myth B? Authors often do that. The ‘what if’ game is one of my favorite creative tools.

So, how does this tool work? Let’s take a couple of my stories as examples.

BLACK SAIL - a retold myth from my Mythos series, available from Phaze

EDITH HAMILTON’S MYTHOLOGY has always been a favorite of mine. If you scour the original stories, as she told them, you will find the following tales:

1. Ariadne gives Theseus the secret to defeating the Minotaur.

2. Theseus marries Ariadne’s sister Phaedra.

3. Theseus forgets to change the sail on his ship from black to white, and his father, Aegeus, believing Theseus dead, kills himself, leaving Theseus king.

4. Somehow, Ariadne ends up marooned on Naxos.

5. Proteus sends Dionysis to Naxos, and he finds Ariadne there.

6. Phaedra tries to seduce Theseus’s son, and failing that, accuses him and gets him exiled, at which point, he is killed. Phaedra kills herself.

7. Theseus makes a deal with the gods to bring his son back to life. His son becomes king, and Theseus is exiled.

8. Theseus is killed while visiting his friend King Lycomedes.

But what tied them all together. How did Theseus end up with Phaedra as his bride? How did Ariadne end up on Naxos? Why did Theseus forget to change the sail? What happened when Dionysis found Ariadne? How did Theseus find himself in a position to make a deal with the gods? How did Theseus find his way to Lycomedes, and who killed Theseus and why? That’s the fun of writing the story behind the story. Since none of these things are clear in the original myths, the author has complete freedom to stay true to the originals and fill in the holes that have started the game of ‘what if’ in the first place.


THREE WISHES - an Urban Grimm story, available from Under The Moon


The original Brothers Grimm tale of “The Three Little Men in The Wood” went something along the lines of:

A widow with a daughter convinced a widower with a daughter that she would treat his daughter better than her own, if he married her. He did, and his daughter’s treatment got worse and worse and her daughter’s better and better, until the step-mother was actively trying to kill off her husband’s daughter. She sent the girl out in the dead of winter wearing only a paper dress and told her not to come home until she brings back a basketful of strawberries. For her lunch, the step-mother gave her only a small bit of hard bread to eat.

In the woods, the girl found a little house owned by three strange men. She gave them some of her breakfast and swept the snow for them. The men found her so endearing, they gifted her their magic. The first decided she would grow more beautiful every day. The second proclaimed a piece of gold would fall from her mouth every time she spoke. The third decreed that a king would come and take her as his wife. While she swept the snow, she found ripe strawberries and filled her basket with them. She thanked the men and ran home with the berries her stepmother had demanded.


At home, her step-mother and step-sister discovered that gold came from her mouth when she talked, and she told them about the little men. Her step-sister was jealous and wanted to visit the little men to get gold of her own. At first her mother resisted. It was so cold, she feared her daughter would fall ill. At last she agreed, dressed her daughter in fur, and gave her a lunch of the finest bread, butter, and cakes.

The step-sister went to the house, was rude to the little men, ate her food without sharing it, and refused to help them sweep the snow. She was so unpleasant, the little men decided to punish her. One decided she would grow uglier every day. The second proclaimed that a toad would jump from her mouth whenever she spoke. The final one decreed that she would die a horrible and violent death.


In time, the man’s daughter became more beautiful and her step-sister uglier. The step-mother, still trying to kill her, sent the girl to the icy river to rinse yarn. While she was there, a king happened by and decided on the spot that she would become his wife.


In time, she bore him a son. In a fit of jealousy, the step-mother and step-sister dragged the girl from her bed and threw her into the river and pretended the step-sister was the girl, abed and fevering. When the girl returned to her husband and he learned of the deception, he had the step-mother and step-sister thrown into a barrel full of nails, rolled into the river, and thereby killed.

Now, how to update that into an urban fantasy? The basic setup of the step-mother and step-sister is timeless, of course. In this case, Ellie is a college student, working to pay rent to her step-mother so she doesn’t end up on the streets without a place to live. With the entire estate, save a small trust fund Ellie won’t inherit for another four years, in her step-mother’s name, Ellie has no legal recourse.


Enter three godfathers Ellie never knew she had. When her step-mother stops paying their housekeeper, it’s up to Ellie to uphold her grandfather’s will...by playing housekeeper for them personally.

When they insist on giving her gifts she was due at birth, Ellie seeks to weasel out by asking for a bit of knotwork jewelry and some pocket change. What she ends up with is an enchanted knotwork that she can’t remove and is supposedly bespelled to protect her, a wallet that fills with $1000 every time it is emptied, and a soulmate being drawn to her. Of course, that sort of magic doesn’t go unnoticed in today’s world. For one thing, what happens when you get caught with $50,000 in cash on your person? It’s not pretty.

By Brenna Lyons