update

Listen up, I'm only going to say this once. It's partly because it's a promise I may not be able to keep. But it's important.

The publication below, Be Our Guest, was written to be part of the Global Beasts series. This is a series of books that will all have similar covers, and similar themes, and will all be set in the 18th century. They are all retellings of The Beauty and the Beast.

My new book, Be Our Guest, meets most of those criteria except one; it's not truly set in the 18th century. It's kind of an anti-fairy tale, in the sense that at one point the main character has to admit that her beau is not going to turn into a prince. I wrote it thinking my deadline was August 2025. It turns out that my deadline was August 2026, and the first books of the series are just being rolled out now.

As a result, I have decided to take another year, write a true 18th century fairy tale, and slip into my place, in August 2026, as if this book never happened. The new one will be a kind of echo of this one. They will be partners in their own world of folk tales and the 18th century.

I will not change this one much. It expresses many of my true feelings about the movie and about life, and I'm proud of it. But I will not deliberately push it forward in my crowd of fantasy writers, most of whom are much better at publicity and putting books out there than I am. Instead, I'll let it sit and work on the next one.

Watch out for the Global Beasts series. Lots of good books in there! When I finish mine, the one I intend to put in the series in place of the one I just wrote, you'll be the first to know.